


File On A Very Particular Establishment

by Cerberusia



Category: Callan (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Sharing a Bed, Undercover As Gay, Undercover as a Couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 16:58:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20642564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerberusia/pseuds/Cerberusia
Summary: Meres is the target of attempted blackmail. In the course of their assignment to neutralise the would-be blackmailer, Callan and Meres are required to go undercover as a couple.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [Cerberusia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerberusia/pseuds/Cerberusia) in the [iibb2019](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/iibb2019) collection. 

> With especial thanks to Firestorm717, for cheerleading me through this when I got stuck on where to take the plot next. (Answer: pick a trop you like and write towards that, bugger the plot.) I realise that I've written 25K that very few people will ever read, so accordingly it's a whole load of the gentler side of my id unloaded onto the page in a bout of shameless self-indulgence. I make no apology. Please enjoy.

Hunter was buoyant when Callan entered his office. This was not a good sign. Hunter's vulpine countenance did not naturally lend itself to levity, and Callan recognised his mood as more labile than truly light. Callan might even have described it as _whimsical_, which was a very bad sign indeed. A Hunter who appeared _whimsical_ was, in fact, furious.

Meres was already in the room, which did not surprise him. Meres managed to convey, with a slightly raised eyebrow and a quick up-and-down: _Rough night, then, David?_ Callan ignored him in a manner meant to imply that Meres should mind his own damn business. Callan could still shoot straight, hangover or no hangover.

"Callan," said Hunter expansively, and Callan felt his critical eye sweep over his rumpled appearance, as he was meant to. But Hunter made no comment. He didn't need to. His look spoke for him. Callan stared back in the insolent fashion that had so annoyed the public school officers during his stint in the Army. Whatever Hunter had for him, it didn't interest him. Not after Richmond. Not that it mattered to Hunter whether or not a job interested Callan, if it was Callan's talents he required. "A good morning to you...I'd offer you hair of the dog, but perhaps you don't need it?"

His lip curled almost imperceptibly. He assumed that Callan was slipping back into dependence on alcohol. He might well be right.

"No, sir." Callan faced Hunter at parade rest, even as his eyes roved over the room, taking in the familiar ornaments: the Sheraton sofa-table, the Aubusson carpet, the Renoir of the dancer tying her slipper. The trappings of Hunter's other life - whatever life Hunter could have outside work - brought to add comfort to the anonymous cold study. He had left them there during Callan's own brief tenure, and Callan had imagined being the kind of man who owned such things not because he had bought them at auction, but because they had adorned the rooms of his childhood home and been passed down to him in due course.

Hunter licked his lips before beginning - a curiously hesitant gesture that at once put Callan on his guard.

"There has been a blackmail attempt against an operative of the Section."

Alright, that was interesting, and accounted for Hunter's faux-whimsical attitude. Callan spoke briskly and without emotion:

"Who, and for what?"

Meres spoke before Hunter could:

"Me." For once, Callan could relish Meres looking supremely uncomfortable - except that he was too busy being astonished. "For secrets of British Intelligence." Meres spoke in a clipped, resentful tone.

"That's easy, then. You haven't got any."

"Secrets, or intelligence? No, don't answer that." Before Callan could answer anyway and start a proper argument, Hunter broke in.

"The demand came in the form of a photograph, and a short type-written note. It was delivered by hand, and promises further contact will be made."

"A _photograph?_ Toby, what _have_ you been up to?" Callan assessed how tightly Meres' lips were pursed and how he was starting to flush. The obvious was that he'd been spotted interrogating somebody or moving a body...but no, Meres would be furious at that, not embarrassed.

"Meres will supply the details later," said Hunter dismissively, in a way that Callan knew meant he didn't want it discussed in his office. Right: drugs or sex, then. And since as far as Callan knew, Meres had given up acquiring drugs for his stupid, vulnerable girlfriends since before he'd been sent to Washington, that left...

"I've told you before, Toby: you should really stop picking the prettiest young things as trainees," he said, laughing, and watched Meres flush with rage. Bingo. "It's obvious what you're _really_ after."

"The material does not pertain to a trainee, nor indeed any other member of the Section," Hunter again broke in, irritably. "Your assignment is to track down this blackmailer and neutralise him. I am not interested in the material itself: I am interested in how the blackmailer has come to know of the Section, and that Meres is an agent of it."

"And you want me to do it? Come off it, Hunter: I'm a killer, not a detective."

"You are the only other member of the Section who has read Meres' file, and therefore the only one I can trust with the delicate details of this sordid attempt at blackmail." Pretty rich, considering that should Meres ever try to leave the Section before the Section was done with him, Hunter would have no compunction about blackmailing him with the very same details. A copy of the photograph was surely already sitting in Meres' file.

And with that, they were summarily dismissed from the Presence. They sidled into Meres' airless cupboard where, with a dubious sideways glance at Callan, Meres set the electric kettle to boil.

"Right, fill me in," said Callan, fetching down the mugs. "And don't go leaving anything out to spare your blushes, mate, because we need all the details on this one."

"I wouldn't have guessed that you had such a prurient interest in my private life," Meres simpered as he handed him the teabags, before turning serious. "It's much as you've no doubt already guessed: the photograph shows me in a comprising position with a young man; the letter outlines what will happen to it if I fail to comply with its demands. Namely, to send copies of the photograph to my family and 'boss', as they put it. The threat is immaterial, of course: something similar will have been in my file since I joined. But the whole thing has a very strange odour."

"Fishier than a chip shop," Callan agreed.

"The letter also implied that there were more photographs of the same type, and advised me to 'consider my position carefully'." Meres examined sceptically a pot of UHT milk, before pouring it into a little jug. Because serving the milk to a guest straight from the plastic pot would _never_ do - really, sometimes Callan felt almost fond of Meres' absurd upper-class niceties. They were such a marvellous contrast to what a thug he really was.

"Doesn't sound like the KGB, and definitely not the SSD. Doesn't sound like any outfit I know, come to that." Callan stretched out his legs as he thought about it. The kettle boiled. Meres poured, and Callan privately relished the sight of Meres making tea. It reminded him of the time he'd had to go undercover as a nouveau-riche sharpshooter on a shooting weekend, and had asked if Toby was available to be his 'valet'. Lonely had turned out to be a more suitable candidate, but the schadenfreude would have kept him warm on cold winter nights.

"In fact," he said as he handed Callan his cup, "the whole thing looks rather amateurish, except that they know that I have this information."

"How compromising is the photograph?" asked Callan out of morbid curiosity. He stirred his tea as Meres considered his answer for a moment.

"Put it this way: you couldn't print it in the Sunday Times, but the News of the World _might_ get away with it."

"Yeah, alright." That was pretty compromising. "You got copies of the photo and the letter?"

"Only the letter, I'm afraid - though I doubt you'd find the photograph _enlightening_." Shame, that: Callan would have liked to have a copy of the photo just to make Meres uncomfortable. "The originals are being analysed, of course. Here." He handed over the facsimile of the letter. It was just as Meres had said.

"The other man in the photo - I'm assuming there is only one other man - could he have been in on it?"

"Possible, but surprising. I used a different name, and - forgive me if this sounds unreasonably paranoid - I did take the precaution of checking the young man's wallet later that night, and found nothing irregular. His name's Ronald Hogan, and I have his address, if you and your smelly friend would care to do your usual double-act? I have some discreet enquiries to make at certain clubs."

Callan took the address, scrawled on a scrap of paper in Meres' looping penmanship. "I'll do it tonight," he said.

~*~*~

Lonely kicked up no fuss at being asked to break into a third-floor flat. For twenty quid, of course.

"Good sturdy drainpipes, these," he said approvingly. "Not like those flimsy bits of plastic you get nowadays - see them ones just across the road. Somebody ought to tell 'em it's not safe - what if somebody climbed one and broke 'is neck?"

Callan agreed that this was an oversight on the part of Lambeth Council.

As it turned out, Callan could have done the job himself. Hogan's flat had minimal security, not even a proper burglar alarm. You're fixing to get robbed for real, mate, thought Callan. Good thing it's just me and Lonely come while you're out to turn the place over.

Hogan did have a safe, as it turned out - a piddling little thing of the kind they put in hotel rooms. Callan let Lonely crack it just to give him something to do, while he prowled the rest of the flat. It was neat enough, and typical of any small bachelor pad in Central London. The bathroom had been recently re-done, with fittings in fashionable avocado green. The kitchen cupboards contained staples and alcohol, the fridge mostly milk and tonic water - the mark of a man who usually ate out. So far, so ordinary.

Callan got luckier when he perused the bookshelf. _The Portrait of Dorian Gray,_ Plato's _Symposium,_, a collection of Thomas Mann's short stories, the recently-published _Maurice_ that he'd read about in the paper...Other titles too, but those stood out to him. Though what did it really prove? That Hogan was a poof? He'd known that already.

"Mr. Callan," Lonely whispered. The little man had got the safe open in under two minutes.

"Good job, old son," Callan whispered back as he peered inside. "Now keep your sticky fingers to yourself, alright?"

"Yes, Mr. Callan." The reproach in Lonely's voice was like a dog denied table scraps. "Worth a few bob, that, though, innit?"

The cufflinks were solid silver, by Callan's estimation, and the signet ring of gold. Handsome pieces, alright. 'Worth a few bob' indeed. But no photographs.

Callan checked the books on the shelves, rifling through them and shaking them out. Pictures, at last - but not, when he picked them up, of the kind of secretive paparazzi-like shot Meres had described. There were two men in the photos, but only one at a time. Callan recognised neither, except as a particular type of blandly handsome pin-up. It was pretty tame stuff, as pornography went - suggestive rather than explicit, what people of more delicate sensibilities called 'erotica'.

He circled the living room for a moment, peering through the gloom - for their clandestine entry precluded turning on the electric light - until the gleam of white on the doormat caught his eye. In buildings like this, the mailboxes were downstairs and each resident had a key. This could only be a note from somebody in the building.

_SAW YOU WERE OUT - DINNER THURS? BUZZ WHEN YOU GET BACK. - B_ The handwriting was a woman's. Callan considered it, memorised it. There was a Barbara Nicholson in the building. It looked like she and Hogan had struck up a friendship - perhaps even that supposedly impossible thing, a friendship between a man and a woman truly free of sexual interest or intent.

He finally struck gold with the mailbox itself. The lights were off in the hallway, for it was gone midnight, and the flats were silent. In a bigger building, Callan might have preferred to go in during the daytime and rely on the anonymity of a crowd; but everybody in these eight flats would know each other and each other's regular visitors by sight. Callan's own place was much the same.

He'd already told Lonely to scarper, once he'd put the safe back how he'd found it. He'd watched the little man climb out the window and down the drainpipe, like one of those monkeys that seems ungainly on land, but nimble in the trees. Then he'd crept down to the lino-floored lobby, cleaned by a house-proud hand but starting to show scuff-marks around the door.

Hogan was only gone for two days, and the mail had not piled up in his absence. There was a catalogue from a smart men's clothier, a bill, a postcard from Greece (Callan took note of the address), and a typed envelope. The 'o' of 'Hogan' had a slight defect at the top. The same as the letter addressed to Meres had had.

Callan retired to Hogan's flat with his prize. The kettle was an electric model, like the one Meres had used that morning, and made little enough noise that he could use it to steam open the envelope. Inside was a letter, folded around a photograph. Callan drew out both with gloved hands.

The letter began in the same fashion as Meres' had: private life, sordid secrets, threat of exposure. But the demand was different: money, not secrets. Which would make sense, since as far as Callan knew, Hogan had no contact with The Game - had not even been a member of the Communist Society at Leeds. No, Hogan wasn't the blackmailer, and whoever the blackmailer was, they looked more amateur with every move they made.

Callan turned his attention to the photograph. It was presumably though not necessarily the same one as had been sent to Meres, since it had Meres in it and the other man must be Hogan - a very handsome, fair young man, not as tall as Meres. They were kissing, and Meres had a hand between Hogan's thighs. 'Suggestive enough' - Meres had been right that it wouldn't be publishable in the Sunday Times. It was a good, clear photo, despite the dark conditions it had been taken in - a practiced photographer? He looked more closely at the background. The poor light made it difficult to be sure, but he thought they were outside.

That was stupid, Toby, he told an imaginary Meres. Doing something like that out in the open. No doubt Hunter had already given him an earful about that. The Section had, to Callan's knowledge, no opinion one way or the other on its agents' homosexual habits, provided that they could not be blackmailed about them. Snell had written some unflattering things in Meres' file about it that Callan had skimmed during his brief stint as Hunter, before he'd decided to recall Meres from Washington; but on the long list of all the things that _might_ be written about Meres' personality and habits, buggery was by far the least objectionable.

Callan took a photograph of them both, letter and picture. Then he re-sealed the envelope, and put it back where he'd found it. Hogan's reaction to it might well provide a clue to the blackmailer.

As he drove back towards his Bayswater flat, Callan thought about the connection. It was presumably somebody whom Meres and Hogan both knew - or, at least, knew both Meres and Hogan. Not a professional blackmailer. In fact, he'd put money on this being a first attempt. Somewhat competent for an amateur. Callan _hated_ dealing with bloody amateurs.

Above all, he wanted to know where the photograph had been taken.

~*~*~

"Oh yes," Meres confirmed when they met at the shooting range the next morning. "There are certain _establishments_, you know. The picture was taken at the back of a club in Soho."

Callan let his face convey how dubious he thought the photo, the club, and Meres' supposed brains.

"It isn't the sort of place where chaps go round taking photos of other chaps," said Meres rather stiffly. "I didn't even notice it had been taken."

"I guessed you hadn't. Don't think the bloke would still have a camera if you had. Or fingers, probably."

Meres, instead of looking abashed at this reminder of his habit of excessive violence, looked flattered.

"Now," he said, are you going to 'fill me in', as the Americans say, regarding your visit to Hogan's flat last night?" Meres' posh, purring tones managed to make _that_ sound like he'd had an 'assignation' with Hogan himself.

Callan, ignoring Meres' insinuation, briefly laid out the important facts: Hogan's lack of security, his safe, and the blackmail letter addressed to him.

"As I thought, the virtuous Hogan is not the culprit. And the would-be blackmailer sounds like an opportunist rather than an operative. Fairly competent thus far, though."

"Amateurs always slip up," said Callan, grimly. "I want a look at this club."

He knew the moment the words left his mouth that Meres would pounce on them, and he did.

"_David_, you need only have asked..." He trailed off with a facetious smile as Callan gave him a flat look.

"Yeah, just the opportunity I've been waiting for. Look, what kind of place is it, exactly? Does a bloke need to be approved by committee, or just invited as a guest? I'm assuming it _is_ all blokes."

"It is, indeed, a gentlemen's club; though not of the same kind as one find in Pall Mall. Membership is loose and informal, and bringing a guest is _de rigeur_ \- otherwise we'd all get bored of each other. It's a step up from whatever they do in discotheques these days, but the purpose is arguably similar." To drink and find somebody to go home with, Callan surmised.

"Right, well, I want to see it. I want to see where the photograph - or photographs, as the blackmailer keeps threatening - was taken, and I want to scope out the clientele. We might even provoke our new friend to strike again."

"David," said Meres, looking incredulous, "this is a very _particular_ kind of establishment-"

"Yeah, yeah, I know that. What, do you think I'm going to be shocked? March up to the bar and demand to know where all the birds are?"

"No, but I _do_ think you'll go berserk on the first man who pinches your arse - and believe me, they will."

"Oh, you've got a better idea, then? Didn't think so. Belt up, ye of little faith. And I can control myself, thank you - I've done bird, I think I can cope with blokes leering at me."

"The behaviour expected among the inmates of Wormwood Scrubs and that expected among the clientele of this particular club are very different." Meres paused. "If anything," he said thoughtfully, "it might help if you seemed, mm, receptive to advances. Are you _quite_ sure you could cope with that, David?"

"No need: if I've come in with you, there's no need to be eyeing up anybody else." Callan took a swig of his tea. Surprisingly, Meres made quite a decent cuppa.

"David, I believe that's the most complimentary thing you've ever said to me." Meres' eyebrows were making a concerted effort to meet with his hairline. Callan snorted.

"I just know what you're like, Toby. You like them besotted." That was a polite way of putting it. Meres appeared to view romantic liaisons as a combination of power-play and an exercise in one's own vanity. Shallow, perhaps, but people like Meres didn't lie awake at night worrying about a lack of 'deep connection' in their lives. Meres' only true passion was work - the dirty business of killing people. If he could frighten them out of their wits beforehand, so much the better. "We're going, together. Tonight good?"

"Tonight will be fine." Meres still looked a touch sceptical. "Alright, David, on your head be it. Meet me at this address at eight, and please try _not_ to get me black-balled." Callan received another slip of paper, bearing an address in Soho: Greek Street. 

"Ta." He read it twice, committing it to memory, before putting it in his pocket. "Right, I'm off to check in on Hogan. See you at eight."

"Eight," Meres agreed, and Callan left the shooting range to the sound of Meres trying to beat his accuracy score.

~*~*~

"This bleeder, 'e don't do _nuffin_," Lonely complained. "I mean, it's an easy job, Mr. Callan, but I promise you: _nuffin_. I tell you though, 'e looks right nervous."

"And you get ten nicker for that easy job, plus expenses, so don't you go complaining, now."

"Oh no, Mr. Callan." Lonely was mollified by the mention of expenses - which in this case meant a few pints of light-and-bitter and an astonishing quantity of steak-and-kidney pie. Callan still had no idea where the little man put it all.

It didn't surprise him that Hogan did nothing of interest, had no contacts in Party circles; nor was it surprising that he looked nervous, now that he'd received that letter Callan had intercepted and so carefully stuck back together. He'd been hoping that Hogan might know the blackmailer in ordinary life; but it looked like the only contact they had must be at the club where the photo had been taken.

He had dinner at a caf, and dressed smartly before heading for Soho. Meres would no doubt criticise, but the role Callan was playing tonight didn't require him to pass as gentry. In fact, he was more or less playing himself, but queer. Not the effete, over-groomed type: the other type, the one the posh effetes usually went for.

Speaking of posh effetes, Meres was waiting for him outside the address he'd given, which was a pub. Callan assessed it: it looked like a queer pub to him. The clientele had that look to them. There were a couple of women; but then one of them turned, and the slit in her fashionable dress revealed distinctly unfeminine calves, and she picked up her drink with a strangely large, square-knuckled hand. The bloke she was with didn't seem to mind.

But that wasn't where they were going. Meres nodded to him, and they headed up the road.

"Evening, David." They had to walk close together to speak without being overheard.

"Evening. This club - what name are you under?"

"All first-name basis, no surnames asked for or given."

"Won't your friends there be surprised at you turning up with me? We both know I've got about twenty years on your usual deb's delights." It wasn't as if they gossiped about it over cocktails, but Callan noticed the young men Meres noticed, and they were always pretty, young, and soft-looking. The type of boy who cried attractively.

"'Friends' is perhaps stretching it; but it's no bad thing if we surprise the other regulars - I wouldn't want to be predictable. Maybe they'll think I'm settling down at last with a nice older man?" He batted his eyelashes facetiously at Callan, who knew he'd walked right into that one.

"How'd it go this morning? Beat your 4.2 yet?" Meres scowled.

"My recent scores are 4.3 and 4.4, as I'm sure you know."

"Ooh, we are moving up in the world." Callan's score was 4.8 or better, every time, and they both knew it. They turned off Greek Street down a poorly-lit lane, the kind where people got mugged. This would be just the kind of place Callan would choose to wait for a mark.

Their destination was a black door set in a discreetly Georgian porch, which looked like it might lead to a private house. Meres knocked on it, and it was opened almost instantly - with the chain still on. Callan got the impression of a slight, nervous figure, and then the door was closed, the chain taken off, and they were ushered to the basement steps with a deferential murmur. Toby's face was clearly a familiar sight.

The steps led to a basement that by Callan's estimate stretched beyond the footage of the house above and under that of its neighbour. Callan heard the tinkle of glassware and beat of live music even before the door was opened to reveal a nightclub that could have been there since before the Blitz.

The 'particular establishment' looked much like any other nightclub - and definitely a nightclub rather than the modern type of discotheque. Tables on carpet, low-lit, and at one end a stage for the band and a dancefloor. The music was more modern than the decor. There were a few couples in evening dress swaying to it, and it took Callan a moment to realise that they were - of course - all comprised of men, including the handful in silk dresses. To the side, there were a couple of doors: one to the gents', and one that Callan presumed led outside to the alley where their incriminating photo had been taken.

There was a certain frisson in the air. Callan recognised it: it was the feeling of a place where people came to hook up. Men were looking each other up and down - sometimes subtly from below lowered lashes, sometimes blatantly - and leaning in very close to murmur in a fellow's ear or light his cigarette. Callan wondered, with a sort of morbid fascination, how many of the good-looking, youthful faces here Meres had gone home with.

They drank: Scotch for Callan, pink gin for Meres. They both sipped slowly and looked around at the clientele. Callan's eyes caught on a couple of young men of aristocratic mien, both fair and rather pretty. He caught Meres looking at them too. Yes, they were both exactly what he guessed as Meres' type. He nudged Meres, playfully. Mostly playfully.

"Oi, don't forget who you came in with."

Meres looked surprised, then facetious, and said,

"I always knew you'd be the jealous type."

"Mm-hm. Tell me more about this place, anything you know."

"Budge up, then, and let me whisper in your ear."

Callan obligingly budged up so they could sit next to each other on the sofa. With their legs pressed together and heads bent, they ought to look like any other couple in the room murmuring sweet nothings to each other. Callan wondered whether to put an arm around Meres' waist. Some of the other men were doing it. Couldn't hurt, he supposed. His left arm, of course.

"Much as it appears, really. The proprietor - a Henry FitzWilliam, Viscount Corbridge - owns the two houses above, and found it convenient to knock the two basements into one shared room. It's soundproofed and insulated, which is why we're not freezing and the neighbours aren't hammering down the door. The clientele is all-male and predominantly chaps who regard themselves as _the right sort_. Their guests are usually similar, though occasionally someone brings along his bit of rough."

Callan squeezed Meres' waist in a not entirely friendly manner.

"All very discreet, invitation-only, though I don't believe it can be a complete secret, what with the musicians - somebody's bound to talk. Not sure how old Harry engaged them. I do know _some_ men's real names - hard not to when I went to school with a good handful, and Sandhurst with couple." And then checked their wallets of the men he went home with, just to be sure. "Batty Bampton clocked me the minute I walked in; but then, he should, given what I caught him doing - _who_ I caught him doing, I should say - in the public conveniences when we were at Sandhurst together."

"Mm." Callan continued to scan the room from beneath lowered lashes. The young bloke in the corner was being _very_ forward with his friend, who didn't seem to mind. There was nobody who struck him as having that particular conservation of movement that characterised an agent or a killer. Most men held their drinks in their right hands, rather than leaving them free to draw a gun - which nobody was carrying that Callan could see. "What else is there to do down here, except get handsy with each other?"

"Well, we could dance." Meres' tone was dubious, and suggested less that he thought Callan might object, and more that he wasn't sure Callan was capable of such civilised activities.

"Not a chance. I can't do it backwards." Not a skill Callan had ever required, strangely enough. Though what officers got up to in their free time was anybody's guess.

"Nor in heels, I'm sure. Fortunately, I can, though given the height difference it may look a little odd." Callan tried to imagine this, and failed. Meres was slightly camp, but not enough - Callan had thought - to enjoy being whirled around by a big butch bloke. Meres _was_ the big butch bloke; well, compared to this lot, anyway.

"There's a floor full of blokes dancing together, and you think _that's_ what looks odd?" He forbore to ask about the heels. Probably not what Meres had meant, anyway; though Meres _had_ been very confident, if furious, about putting on that grey silk gown to be a decoy for the old lady a few months ago...

"What looks _odd_ is us coming to a nightclub all couple-like, and neither dancing nor canoodling in a dark corner." Meres had a point. Callan sighed, got up, and offered his hand. Meres took it.

Meres was, unsurprisingly, both a good dancer and perfectly capable of taking the woman's part. It felt strange holding another man in his arms as they moved with reasonable elegance round the floor, but not unpleasant. It reminded Callan of the few times they'd had to touch one another when not trying to injure: when Meres had been shot by that amateur in '69, or when Meres had so solicitously (and uncharacteristically) checked Callan over and helped him up after he'd been clobbered hard by Richmond. It lacked the sensual pleasure of holding a woman's waist and feeling her body beneath her clothes, but it was satisfying to touch somebody without violence.

He kept an eye out for who might be watching them; surely if their would-be blackmailer was there, he'd be interested. Nobody caught his eye, though he did notice a couple of blokes checking them both out, rather unsubtly. Callan knew the look from the Scrubs. Considered from the outside, he supposed they didn't make a bad picture. He spared a thought for the Groper, who would absolutely enjoy a place like this. He ought to see if he could get Meres to recommend him as a member.

"We should take a look at that alley," he murmured in Meres' ear.

"Thought you'd never ask, darling." Callan pinched him, not hard, and felt Meres' silent laughter. "Look amorous," Meres advised, and towed him off the dance floor towards the back exit ("Referred to as the back passage, for reasons I hope are obvious.").

Callan immediately recognised the alley from the photograph: the lone streetlamp that illuminated the door and not much else. Meres and Hogan must have been pretty unfortunate - or, more likely, careless. Just a few paces to either side and the camera would have had a devil of a time picking up any detail. He listened carefully, but heard nothing but a pigeon rustling in a bush.

"It's a little early for people to come out here," said Meres in his ear. His hands rested possessively on Callan's hips. "David, if anybody _should_ come-"

Right on cue, the door opened. Callan, his back to the wall and one eye on the opening door, seized Meres' jaw and kissed him.

The stranger was average height, dark, younger than Callan but probably older than Meres, and wore a smart black overcoat and spectacles. He seemed to have come outside for some fresh air and peace, as he got out a cigarette from a pretty case and smoked it contemplatively, staring into the middle distance. He seemed barely to notice Callan and Meres putting up a show a few yards away.

Eventually, the dark man went back inside. Callan and Meres separated.

"I want to look behind that corner," said Callan impatiently, wresting out of Meres' grip.

"Well, make it quick, because men come out here to do rather more than just _kiss_, so you're going to find it difficult to get enough time away from us feeling each other up."

"What a shame, that was my favourite bit," said Callan, deadpan. They went round the corner.

They met a dead end. The yard was surrounded by fence, high enough that although Callan could have got over it, you'd have to be pretty athletic to consider it. But there was enough room before the dead end for a man to stand, undetected by whoever was round the other side.

"They used to have a set-up here with a door with a hole in it." Meres' voice was only a murmur. "Not sure when they got rid of it. Shame."

Callan could guess just where the hole in that door had been, and what it had been for. He crouched to examine the ground.

"So without that, there's no reason to come round here?"

"Not much, I should think. Privacy, perhaps, if you didnt fancy taking a chap back to yours; but you'd have to know already that it was here, and besides it's dark enough anyway."

Callan thought this suggested a rather laissez-faire attitude to modesty; but then, a certain degree of immodesty seemed to be the whole point of the club. He squinted at the ground, and found nothing. Not that he'd expected so much as a footprint. He pivoted so he was kneeling on the rough paving, and mimicked holding a camera. The streetlamp illuminated the scene perfectly.

"Here," Callan murmured. Meres raised his eyebrows in agreement.

The door began once more to open. Meres hauled Callan back upright and into what Callan would credit as a pretty realistic-looking clinch. The last time he'd had so much bodily contact with Meres, they'd been assigned to fight, to test Callan upon his return to the Section. For a supposed gentleman, Meres fought _dirty_.

This time, it was a grey suit that came out, with a tall, fair man inside it. He went round the corner. Callan squeezed Meres and let his neck be nuzzled as he whispered this information in Meres' ear. They canoodled in leisurely fashion for a minute, Callan considering the options. They didn't _know_ this was their man. But they did know he hadn't just gone round the corner for a piss, and that there was sod-all else there but for the camera spot. At last, he whispered to Meres:

"He's an amateur, and amateurs make mistakes." Callan dug his nails into the back of Meres' neck. "I want you to make this look like something even the _News of the World_ couldn't print, got it?"

Again, Meres' silent laugh reverberating through his chest. "Of course, David - my pleasure."

"That's what I'm afraid of. Don't enjoy yourself too much," Callan muttered as a long-fingered hand slid up his inseam.

"Oh, I promise you'll enjoy yourself too." Before Callan could say that he doubted that _very_ much, Meres kissed him again. It was a thorough, languid sort of kiss, rather more involved than the hasty faux-passion they'd imitated thus far. It felt more like a kiss, like he was actually kissing Meres, rather than just shoving their mouths together.

It felt - and Callan could barely admit this even in the privacy of his own mind - rather nice, if one discounted that Meres was involved. He kissed in a smooth, practised way, that was neither timid nor aggressive, but leisurely explorative of his mouth. Meres' hand was still stroking his thigh, teasing rather than demanding. It made Callan wonder whether this was how Meres treated the pretty boys who made eyes at him inside. For that matter, did he normally do it with them out here? It was stupid if he did; but Callan remembered poor Susan Marsden, and remembered that Toby, despite being completely insensitive to love or compassion, was not above being rather stupid when faced with the incentive of sex, violence, or both.

It made Callan wonder whether he ought to be rougher with Meres, since he was supposed to be playing the role of 'trade' tonight. He groped Meres' arse ungently, and got a pleased wriggle for his trouble. If Meres had really wanted them to play it that way, it should have been him pushed up against the fence, not Callan - to whom the idea of getting a bit rough with Meres was not unpleasing, since Meres couldn't just haul off and clobber him right now. Since Meres, he was quite sure, was usually the one playing rough, it would be satisfying to watch him have to take the harsh treatment.

The kiss was practised, polished, and demanding. _It has to look real._ So Callan, who had never shared so much as a warm embrace with a male friend - and how long had it been since he'd had one of those? - simply told himself that it worked the same way as with women, and gave as good as he got. There was no point in trying to pretend that Meres was a six-foot flat-chested woman, nor even some safely anonymous man; better to get on with the job in hand and treat it with as much professionalism as snogging a fellow agent in a darkened alley for the delectation of a blackmailer allowed. So he had his tongue in Meres' mouth: so what? Some years ago he'd had his hand clamped over a bullet wound in Meres' upper arm that had already soaked his sleeve in Meres' blood. After that it seemed churlish to complain about sharing bodily fluids.

So he could be professional about it. Except that it continued to feel nice - far more pleasurable than the situation called for. Callan bit Meres' lower lip in warning, but of course Meres liked that and squeezed Callan's thigh, high up, higher and higher, until he was teasing at Callan's inner thigh with his nails. Half Callan's attention was on their hidden voyeur, but the rest was on Meres' competent attentions. This was probably how Meres felt up his conquests - then he was irritated for thinking about it. In any case, it was how he was feeling up Callan, and it was working.

Aware of his own role, Callan roughly felt up Meres in return, like he'd pat him down, but slower. Meres little huff of laughter told him he recognised the motions. As he should: Callan had suffered the impersonal degradation of a thorough body search from him often enough. They hadn't been on good enough terms when most of them occurred for either to make a joke, but during the most recent search Meres had been daring enough to pinch his arse - in front of Hunter, so Callan couldn't hit him and Toby knew it.

As if by way of revenge, Meres' hand slid up his thigh to take hold of his crotch. He gave Callan enough warning that he didn't jump. It was still a little embarrassing - to the part of Callan's soul that was not yet dead to shame - to have Meres find out that his attentions had got Callan hard.

Meres broke their kiss and, still fondling Callan, murmured in his ear,

"I'm going to suck you off." His fingers were undoing Callan's belt and flies. Callan didn't stop him, even when he felt his erection exposed to the cool night air.

Meres sank into a crouch. Callan looked down at his dark head. Meres was holding Callan's erection in his hand, and when he leaned forward to touch the tip of his tongue to the head, Callan thought, _That'll make a great shot for our camerman._ He had the sense that things had at some point got quite beyond his control.

Meres carefully, slowly - for the sake of their audience, Callan thought distantly - enveloped the head in his hot, humid mouth. It wasn't as if Callan had never had this done to him before - the papers said half the population or more had experienced oral sex these days - but he usually preferred to make love to his girlfriends the old-fashioned way, and didn't feel that he was missing out on anything. But the intense attention that Meres was paying to the act - it was the same attention Meres paid to stripping down and cleaning a gun. He knew how to do it, he knew how to do it well, and he _liked_ doing it.

Callan thought he heard shifting behind the corner. It would probably be more polite to hold Meres' shoulder, or the brick behind him. Instead, he put one hand on Meres' head and caught the short dark hair between his fingers. He pulled a little, more for show than to hurt. But Meres let himself be pulled further down onto the cock in his mouth. He looked up at Callan, briefly, and seemed to smirk as best he could. _It's not just your technique, mate,_ Callan thought at him. He arranged his face into an expression meant to convey _Get on with it._ They needed to let their photographer get his shots in and for all they knew his end away too, but there was such a thing as lingering too long over a job.

So Meres did. If Callan had been boorish enough to rank sexual encounters and acts with different partners, this would win a medal in the 'blowjobs' category. That might mean that Callan's sample size was limited; but though it pained him to admit it, Meres was also just very good. If Callan had applied any thought to the matter at all, ever, he would probably have guessed that: Toby liked being good at things, and more than that, he wouldn't tolerate being bad at something that he enjoyed. Callan had assumed that silly little Susan Marsden had been exaggerating in the fashion of young, inexperienced women who really had no basis for comparison. Apparently not.

God, if the worst part of this job turned out to be the part where it forced him to contemplate his fellow agent's sexual prowess - well, he could hardly complain, though Meres would no doubt be insufferably smug for _months_. He spread his legs a little further, letting Meres curl closer. The hot, wet suction sent sparks tingling through his groin and up his spine. Meres' free hand crept up under his shirt to feel the soft skin of his belly, which was arousing and uncomfortably intimate.

Meres kept bobbing his head, slowly at first, then faster, working his mouth up and down Callan's cock. He didn't struggle or hesitate. It was clearly a polished performance. Callan tightened his grip in Meres' hair instinctively. Meres was in complete control of the situation, and Callan didn't like it. _Should have suggested I bugger you up against the wall, Toby - see how you liked it then!_ After all, Meres wasn't the one exposed.

Callan thought briefly of a scenario in which he was, in which Meres and he swapped roles. He knew Meres well enough to say that Meres must have been tempted to play it that way; but also not enough of a fool to try it. Cock-sucking couldn't be beyond the wit of man - he'd had it done to him, he could extrapolate - but he knew he couldn't have made it look real, and wouldn't have wanted to. That needed an actual queer.

Meres sucked patiently at Callan's cock. If anything, Callan would have suggested playing it as the two of them being carried away by passion - did people with homes to go to shag in dark alleys for any other reason? - but Meres was in no hurry. Callan wondered whether their photographer was. He tried to keep his mind on the photographer and whoever might come out of that door next, to distract him from the warm, wet, and deeply arousing attentions being paid to his cock. At least it shut Meres up - he couldn't have borne a running commentary.

He tugged harder on Meres' hair - couldn't quite bring himself to say anything with an audience - and Meres looked up at him again. He wasn't smirking, this time. Without it, he didn't look like Meres: he looked like somebody else, some handsome young officer, crouched there with some man's cock in his mouth. There was something else behind his eyes that veiled the cold flat affect. They had a sensual, sexual look, almost affectionate, as if he really was enjoying this.

Then he closed his eyes and sank down on Callan's cock, all the way down to take it all the way in, and he was suddenly, shockingly, Meres again. He held the head of Callan's cock in his throat and swallowed, and swallowed again, and Callan made a soft hoarse noise and gripped his hair hard enough to hurt. Meres drew back, sucked hard at the sensitive head and screwed his tongue into that spot where the foreskin was anchored under it, stroked Callan's hipbone feather-light; and Callan came in long, shuddering pulses in Meres' mouth.

They stayed like that for a moment, a frozen tableau. Callan had expected Meres to turn to the side and spit, but he didn't. Instead, he slowly licked the cock in his mouth, coaxing out little tremors; then he put it back inside Callan's underwear, and tidied him up. Callan leaned against the brick and breathed hard. His mind and body buzzed pleasantly. _Get it together, David._

Meres rose gracefully to his feet, looking excessively pleased with himself. Then he leaned in to kiss Callan, which was the last straw, because Callan _knew_ he had - yes, that was his own come on Meres' tongue. Callan tolerated it grimly for the sake of their audience.

Just as he was wondering whether they should go back inside or if he was going to have to reciprocate, the door opened once more and emitted a trio of loud, genial, and distinctly amorous gentlemen, who made for the relative privacy afforded by the darkness to their left - though not without a few outrageously knowing leers in their direction. Callan felt a flicker of what might be the tiny remnant of outraged modesty, which he promptly quashed. Meres, he knew from a glance out of the corner of his eye, just looked smug.

The fracas routed their photographer, and he was flushed back up the passage. Callan suffered Meres' nuzzling and watched as the young man, with a deliberate but unconvincing casual air, went to the door. If he'd been any more obviously determined not to look at them, he'd have strained something.

Their mark inside and the threesome completely occupied, Meres and Callan crept back to their corner. Callan crouched to examine the soft dirt at the very edge of the uneven concrete, almost under the high wooden fence. Yes, that was the toeprint of a boot, alright.

"How did you miss him the first time, Toby?" Callan hissed in exasperation. "He's not subtle!"

"My mind was on other things," retorted Meres, his ears distinctly red.

"Hogan just that good, eh?" Meres just gave him a chilly look. Callan stood up and stretched. "Right, we need to go back in and look for man in a grey suit. He might have dirt on his knees." He could have chosen to crouch to avoid that, like Meres had; but it was always a possibility.

But Grey Suit had either crouched or taken a moment to clean up in the Gents', because although there were a handful of fair-haired men and a handful of grey suits, all of them were sartorially impeccable.

"Shall I check?" Meres nodded at the Gents' sign. It made sense: either their mark was in there, or he'd left already.

"No. Don't want to put the frighteners on him. Yet."

"Wouldn't dream of it." Meres looked offended at the suggestion, which meant he'd been hoping to do just that.

"We don't want him to know we're onto him just yet," Callan reminded him. "Get a look at the signing-in book, will you? I want to check who's here tonight."

"First names only," Meres reminded him, but went to do as asked - with a farewell pat to Callan's arse. He was enjoying this far too much, and Callan was going to have to think of something suitably humiliating to keep him from bringing it up _ad infinitum_. But any move risked Meres smirking and saying, _But who really enjoyed himself? I hope you don't pull your girlfriends' hair that hard, I'm sure they wouldn't like that._

It was difficult to claim that he hadn't liked it. Well, what man wouldn't like a blowjob? A blowjob from someone who clearly knew what they were doing, who had clearly practiced a great deal, who had given every intimation of enjoying the performance.

It wasn't as if Callan could make a claim of his injured virtue - he'd shagged women for the sake of a job before. But he'd _liked_ those women, genuinely, even if he hadn't necessarily trusted all of them. He liked women, and he'd only made love to women to whom he was drawn and who were drawn to him in return. He _wasn't_ like Meres, who regarded sex as mechanical and women as disposable. But he'd never been bent, not in the army, not even in the Scrubs, and the most alarming thing was that he had only now realised that he did - and more fool him! - _like_ Meres. Which was bizarre, because Callan would have said that nobody in their right mind liked Meres - there was nothing about Meres _to_ like - but after six years of often-acrimonious acquaintanceship and tentative partnership, he found himself with a sneaking fondness for arrogant, sarcastic, sadistic Toby. And it was bloody inconvenient.

Get a grip, David, he told himself as he saw Meres gliding back over to him. They had a job to do. He let Meres guide him back to their cozy sofa and put an arm around him.

"I can match most names to faces, in fact - it's mostly regulars in tonight. I'd say our mystery photographer rejoices in the name of Harry, James, or Philip." Meres chewed his lip for a moment in thought. "For the purposes of the club, at least," he allowed; but even as the last words left his mouth, he was watching a tall, fair-haired man in a dark grey suit emerge from the Gents'. There was no dirt on his knees, but although Callan had managed only a brief glimpse of him, he knew this was their man. Meres knew it too. "Well, well," he murmured, giving Callan an affectionate squeeze. "Let's hope he doesn't mean to linger too long, hm?"

They stayed there on that sofa, heads bent together in a picture of intimacy. Both studied their mark.

He was a tall young man, about Meres' height and age. His fair hair waved slightly and was cut in an old-fashioned style with a side-parting. There was nothing about his bearing to suggest that he had been in the military or in prison. His manner seemed reserved to the point of diffidence, and he stood on the edge of a larger convivial group who seemed to know him. His gaze seemed to linger on no-one in particular, though he gave off the air of a nervous schoolboy wanting to ingratiate himself with the popular crowd.

"I wish they'd come a little closer," Meres murmured in Callan's ear, tenderly smoothing his hair. "What the devil is this fellow's name? Or his preferred _nom d'indecence_, I suppose."

As if prompted by Meres' words, or an act of Providence, the heartiest fellow in that little group ("Major Montgomery St. Aubyn, Mungo to his intimates - of whom, I may say, there are many.") bellowed genially to their shy mark,

"Harry! Step into the light here, let's get a good look at you! See here, this fellow's overcoat..." 'Harry' looked even more nervous - as well he might, given what that coat had to be concealing in its surely voluminous pockets. Curiously, Callan noted, his obvious discomfort seemed to make the group more eager; a couple leaned towards him with interest kindling in their eyes in a way that reminded him of Meres when he'd just picked up on a potential victim's weak spot. Jackals, Callan thought. 'Mungo' was explaining something about the style of the coat to his circle, but Callan suspected it was more of an excuse to feel up the young man.

"Mungo up to his usual tricks, I see." Meres' breath was tickling his ear.

"When you said that this club catered for _particular tastes_, I didn't realise you meant _this_ particular." It was like watching hyenas teasing a nervy gazelle.

"You didn't give me chance to clarify." Meres ventured a kiss behind his ear, and Callan squeezed his thigh hard enough to bruise. Meres flinched, but laughed. "Not sure it's ever been made explicit or a rule, but given FitzWilliam's own preferences - he used to be a Captain RN, and from the stories one gathers that 'rum, sodomy and the lash' isn't _half_ of it - this place is generally known as catering to a very _specific_ clientele." How many euphemisms could he come up with, Callan wondered, for 'sadomasochism'.

"So you're a professional thug hanging out with a bunch of recreational thugs and their willing victims."

Meres snorted. Hot breath tickled Callan's ear.

"There's enough military men here that I think some would dispute that I'm the _only_ professional."

"Oh, but there's professionals and _professionals_. Officers never like to think of themselves as professional killers, gives them indigestion. Look sharp, our man is leaving."

"Mm. Uncivil of him, don't you think, to wear his overcoat inside all the time? One might almost think he was hiding something." Meres was already drawing him up off the sofa, touchy-feely as any young man eager to get a girl home to bed at the end of an evening. Callan caught another couple of approving glances thrown their way as he was steered to retrieve their coats and then out of the black door into the Georgian porch, before they could lose their man.


	2. Chapter 2

'Harry' lived not far from the club in Soho, on a narrow Westminster street towards Kensington. Callan and Meres tailed him with cool professionalism. Callan disliked tailing men who'd already seen his face and might recognise him, but it was a necessary evil. Their mark looked round a few times, in that worried rabbit-like manner he had; but he didn't seem to notice his tail. The final proof, if it were needed, of his being a complete amateur.

Callan's mind was still on the _why_. He wouldn't even have known about the job - there wouldn't even have _been_ a job - had there not been that line about 'national security'. If the poor fool had just tried to blackmail Meres based on his predilection for duffing up pretty boys, Meres would have found out who he was and handed him his teeth, one by one. How did 'Harry' know about Meres' real job? Callan's neighbours lived under the happy delusion that he was an accountant, as was a necessary evil; but Meres was of the class that went into the army or occasionally the law until such time as dearest pater bit it and he inherited, and until then was kept with a healthy allowance that meant that after resigning his commission he wasn't required to take on any kind of regular work unless he found it diverting. Unless it had been only a lucky guess on Harry's part?

No, there was something else to this. They were groping only at the edges of what Callan suspected to be a bigger conspiracy. He didn't bother saying as much to Meres. He knew as well as Callan did that they'd been put onto it as a job because Hunter too had recognised the stink.

Harry's house was tall and narrow, and while by no means unimpressive, it had a touch of neglect about it, the implication that the owner was somewhat down-at-heel, despite its fashionable address. It was of Georgian type, and the big sash windows were perfect to observe their mark through. Callan and Meres went round the back, skirting the garden which was so conveniently well-bordered with large bushes and trees, and watched Harry, in his shirtsleeves, bear the small camera ("Top of the line," murmured Callan) further into the flat, beyond their view.

"Bet he's got a darkroom set up in there," offered Meres. "We could pay him a visit."

"No, I want to see if he makes contact with anybody."

"Mm," said Meres, which meant that he agreed but was disappointed at delaying his opportunity to work Harry over.

They watched Harry, or rather the lit-up windows of his tall, narrow house from which Harry had disappeared. Meres was probably right about the darkroom: Harry surely wasn't taking his roll of film to the local chemist's for developing. Beside Callan, Meres sighed.

"Not that I don't enjoy freezing in a Westminster bush with you at gone midnight, David, but I can't help but feel that this is another job for our malodorous acquaintance."

"I'll tell him. I'll put him on watch, and tell him he's to call me when this bloke goes out, and I'll have a poke around." This continued to put off Meres coming face-to-face with their mark, which he was no doubt eagerly anticipating; but patience was a virtue that Meres really ought to cultivate.

"You know," Meres continued absently, staring up at the windows, "there's something familiar about our new friend. I just can't place him. Not school, I'm sure - later."

"And there I was thinking he looked just like the kind of bloke who used to have to fag for you." Harry had that public-school face and the nervous disposition that Callan imagined any boy subjected to the whims of a teenaged Meres might develop. "Tell me you haven't shagged him."

"I would remember _that_." Meres huffed impatiently. "I might make some discreet enquiries at FitzWilliam's - you know, who was that pretty nervous little thing you had last night, he looked frightened half to death - that sort of thing."

"He did. Why's he hanging about there, anyway, if it sets him off so badly?"

"One can only suppose that he enjoys it." Meres' tone was a touch more lascivious than usual. He caught Callan's eye. "People do, you know."

"Mm." Yes, Callan knew. People had all sorts of reaction to fear. 

Above them, a now dressing-gown-clad Harry had emerged from whatever inner room he'd been using - darkroom, bathroom for all they knew - but no, a darkroom, because he held in his fingers a quartet of photographs. The images were impossible to make out at this distance, but Callan could well guess what they were. Which would have been the best ones? He must surely have got a shot of Meres sucking Callan's cock, though it wouldn't have been easy to get a good one with how shadowy the alley was. Callan remembered Meres doing his best to make it very clear for their voyeur.

Harry was fingering the photographs thoughtfully, relaxed in an armchair with a finger of something on the table. His expression was avaricious: for money? for sex? The phone didn't ring, he'd made no move towards it, and he showed no signs of intending to go out again.

"Right, no point in hanging around in this bush for the rest of the night," Callan announced before Meres could make a pointed comment. "I'll get Lonely onto him, ring you when I've got something."

"And I'll run Mungo to ground, see what he knows. Good night, David." And he headed off in the direction of Chelsea, while Callan went to find the nearest bus stop.

He turned the job over in his mind all the way home. They knew too frustratingly little to make the pieces fit together, as yet - the most fundamental question was about the photographer who went by the soubriquet 'Harry'. What was his real name? That should help jog Meres' memory to explain where he knew the man from, and would allow Hunter to set the Section's resources to tracking down all information on him. But they needed the name, and for that, Callan needed Lonely.

There was no tail on him, and nobody waiting inside Callan's flat. The locks hadn't been forced. It looked like they really hadn't been spotted. Callan made himself a cup of tea with a slug of whisky in it - a sort of basic hot toddy - and changed wearily out of his best suit. Trust Toby to go in for a gay sadomasochist club which had a dress code, and not the kind that specified a minimum percentage of leather.

Now that there was nothing else to distract him and nothing - short of waking Lonely this very minute - he could do to advance the job until tomorrow, his thoughts were drawn inexorably back to the part of the evening when Meres had kissed Callan, fondled him, then gone to his knees before him and sucked him off in a very showy and very competent fashion.

Just some meaningless sex - barely even worth calling sex. Just a blowjob. Just what was necessary to make their cover believable and draw out the blackmailer. Callan himself had been the one to suggest it. _Something even the News of the World couldn't print,_ he'd said, and that was just what Meres had done.

It hadn't been what Callan had been thinking of - he'd assumed that a more explicit version of the picture of Meres and Hogan was what was wanted, with groping over clothes artfully displayed to the photographer. But when Meres had said, _I'm going to suck you off,_ Callan hadn't objected. Hadn't objected to any of it. In fact, looking back at his own behaviour, he'd probably come off like a woman who wants a man to know she's not _that_ kind of girl, so she doesn't make it too easy for him, even when making love.

Callan wasn't accustomed to feeling embarrassment. Shame, occasionally, and humiliation a few times; but rarely did he feel garden-variety embarrassment these days. The army and then prison had burned a lot that wasn't necessary out of him. But instead of the darker, more complex feelings of regret and rage associated with shame, he felt plain embarrassed about it. It was almost refreshing.

~*~*~

He caught Lonely at sunrise at his Aunty's caf, doing the washing-up and trying to read a dirty magazine propped up on the draining board.

"Go blind doing that, son," he said, and Lonely dropped the dish back into the grimy water with a gasp of horror.

"Mr. Callan," he said, reproachfully, as he fished it out again.

"Got a job for you, son. Watching a house, and the geezer in it, like last time. Twenty nicker."

"Plus expenses?" asked Lonely, hopefully.

"You won't need expenses, it's not near a pub. No, don't you distress yourself, I'll come round at lunchtime with a pie, and you can fill me in on what you've seen."

Lonely looked as if he were about to protest, but a good look at Callan's face persuaded him otherwise. The breakfast trade at the caf was just starting up, and the sounds of workmen and tradesmen penetrated through to their little shack in the yard, overlaid by the dulcet bellow of Aunt Gertie. Lonely picked up the bowl again with a hunted look.

"What am I expectin' to see, Mr. Callan?"

"Not much, I reckon. But I want to know when he goes out, so's I can get in."

"Just like the other one, then. Alright, Mr. Callan, you're on. But are you _sure_ about those expenses?"

Callan went home and, to pass the time and occupy his hands as his mind ticked over, set up Waterloo on the table. Call it chauvinism, but he preferred to play Wellington, and not just because he'd won the real thing. Setting out the forces of the British Army a couple of centuries before he'd had anything to do with it pricked something at the back of his mind, not unpleasantly.

There was the 2nd Guards Brigade, represented by a Guardsman in his red tunic. Callan had painted him dark-haired, which reminded him of Meres. He put the model soldier back down in distaste. He preferred not to think about Meres in his supposed time off, and especially not after the showing he'd made last night. His thoughts kept returning to it, like a tongue prodding against a sore tooth. _Meres sucked you off for the job: forget about it._ But he was uncomfortably aware that Meres would certainly _not_ forget about it, and that the job might need them to do much the same again.

It wasn't that he had some kind of predjudice against queers; never had, even when you were supposed to. But he knew that he wasn't one, and the pleasurable sense-memory of a man's careful and assiduous attentions made him feel strange. It was just that it had been good, he rationalised: it had been competent, so of course he'd enjoyed it. There was nothing suspect in that.

By lunchtime he'd set up the board and made the opening moves. He put on his coat and got the Tube to Kensington, where he found a pie shop that must surely be endangered by the rapid encroachment of yet more fashionable terraces and corresponding rent hikes in that borough. Suitably armed with a selection of its wares, he headed up the street to find Lonely.

"This bleeder spends all 'is time shut up in his flat. 'E don't even go to _church_, Mr. Callan." Lonely's indignation was somewhat muffled by the mash he was concurrently shoving into his mouth like he'd been starved for a week. Lonely, like many of the criminal class, was deeply conservative, including in matters of religion. If Callan were ever to have to break into a church or steal from a vicar, he would do as well to leave the smelly thief out of it.

"Well, you get on the blower when there's movement. That phone box there, quick as anything. I want to get in there as soon as possible."

"And then out as quick as possible, right?" Lonely's outrage over Harry's lapsed religious observance had abated now that he had finished his mash and was making inroads on his pie.

"Too right." And Callan was just about to leave it at that, when the front door opened. At once, he drew back into the doorway and pulled up the collar of his coat. Lonely had the knack of blending right in anywhere, even in this nice bit of Kensington; but Harry knew Callan's face.

Harry's face was pensive but moderately handsome. A few years ago, he might have been the kind of young man Meres liked to seduce. Meres had claimed he would remember; but this Callan doubted. It would be just their luck if this turned out to be some old fling turned sour. Harry turned his collar up against the autumn wind, and headed westward, away from Callan and Lonely. He looked cautious, but not alarmed.

"Follow him."

Lonely didn't even look surprised. He made the universal gesture for demanding pecuniary reimbursement; Callan handed him a tenner and sent him on his way. His footsteps made only the faintest sound on the pavement.

After that, it was the work of a minute to nip round the back and break in. It was better-defended than Hogan's place, at least, because there was a rudimentary alarm system. But it was wired only to the doors, not to the big Georgian sash windows. _Elementary mistake, mate._

Inside, Callan considered the dark wallpaper, now a few decades out of fashion, but well-preserved. It leant the house a slightly stuffy feel, and he wasn't surprised to see that the top flight of stairs had been stripped of its paper to be painted cream instead, making the most of the narrow space.

It was a nice house, but Callan knew the marks of straitened circumstances when he saw them: discoloration on the walls where paintings used to hand, marks on the mantelpiece where ornaments used to stand. It didn't go quite so far as to be shabby; but Harry was on his uppers. And he wasn't called 'Harry', either; not that Callan had expected him to be. His post was addressed to Edward Duffield, Esq. Not a name that meant anything to Callan, but Meres would perhaps know him.

There was a safe, of similar standard to the one in Hogan's flat. Callan had never intended Lonely do it for him: the little man might never recover from the shock of what they might find. And, sure enough, the door swung open to reveal a selection of jewellery - a signet ring, what might have been his mother's pearls, a few other items that looked to have more sentimental value than pecuniary - and the photos with their negatives, tucked neatly into envelopes. Each was dated and labelled. Callan quickly found _R.S.H.&T.D.F.M_, though he wondered at how Duffield knew the initials of his would-be victims. It would help if Toby could remember where he knew the man from. And yes, an envelope bearing the legend _T.D.F.M.&D_. It soothed him a little to see that Duffield didn't know his name: the news that Toby had come in with a 'David' would have spread among the gossips.

He considered taking the photos from the safe, to drive Duffield into a panic. Yes, that would set things moving. But he wanted to give Duffield more time to contact his controller, if that was what he was going to do. There was something to be said for provoking your mark into an unwise move; but it frustrated him to have so little idea of what was really going on. They needed more information from Duffield, and if they didn't get it just from watching him, Meres would no doubt enjoy extracting it from him more personally.

Frustrated, Callan let himself out the way he'd come in. Lots of waiting in this job. They didn't put _that_ in those secret agent movies. Callan rarely attended, but Lonely loved the pictures, and happily related what he felt were the salient details of the plot of whatever he'd seen most recently.

He'd barely taken off his coat when the buzzer went. Meres, of course. Callan let him in before he could make a nuisance of himself. As always, Meres took a moment to take in Callan's flat, with its anonymous decor and an aesthetic politely described as 'functional'. He looked vaguely skeptical, which was an improvement on whenever he'd visited Callan's old flat in Bayswater - that had got an outright moue of disgust. Callan had been hard-pressed to disagree.

"Before you start, I got into Harry's flat today. Turns out he's Edward Duffield, few years older than you. Marlborough. On his uppers. All the photos are kept in his safe, but it's not a good one."

"Duffield! Of course, of course." Meres took off his coat with a flourish. Damn, he was staying. "Yes, I was briefly acquainted with his sister - strong family resemblance." He ran his finger along a windowsill, fastidiously avoiding the dead bluebottle.

"And how did Miss. Duffield feel about it?"

"Well, there were no complaints to _me_. I suppose either she had a drastic change of heart, or dear Teddy heard and took umbrage on behalf of his sister's virtue - not, I should add, that she has any."

"More than you, I'm willing to bet. Well, that's Duffield identified, at least. Anyway, what's your news? You look even more pleased with yourself than usual."

Meres smiled, winningly.

"Got Mungo on the blower. I acted terribly interested in the 'pretty little thing' he was pawing at so disgracefully last night, and he's invited us to dinner to tell us all about it. Of course, it's mainly a pretext to meet you," he added, finishing his protracted review of Callan's flat with a slight grimace.

"To be a celebrity, at my time of life..." Callan considered this offer. "Where?"

"His club - our club. I don't think Mungo has dined anywhere else for the past fifteen years."

"How's the food?"

"Nursery slop, in the main, though it's not said to be as unspeakable as the stuff they serve in the House. It can hardly be worse than your local caf."

"You've never eaten at my local caf, Toby. Come to it, you've never eaten at _anyone's_ local caf." Callan looked him up and down, noting the usual regimental blazer. "How smart are we talking, here?"

"Mungo was at pains to let me know that dressing for dinner is _not_ required, though I'm sure he will anyway. I thought we'd be modern. And it is so much _easier_ to restrain somebody with a proper tie." Meres' was Old Etonian, unsurprisingly.

"Mm. Brings out your eyes. When are we expected?"

"_Please_ say that in front of Mungo, David, he'll simply _die_. Eight o'clock, on the dot, because Mungo is the embodiment of all those stereotypes about officers who are overly-punctual in civilian life."

The Mungo in Callan's recollections seemed to be growing an ever-bristlier mustache.

"Right, meet you there. And yes, Toby, before you make any smart remarks, I _do_ know where the Army & Navy Club is, thank you."

"I was going to ask whether you'd ever been _in_." Callan didn't believe it, and Meres didn't expect him to. "Come to think of it, you might even have been in the old place."

Callan snorted incredulously.

"How old do you think I am, Toby? No, don't answer that. Of course I never saw the inside of the old one. Now scram, I'm sure you've got things to do."

"And so have you, evidently." Meres, miffed at his dig about Callan's age and time in the ranks falling flat, looked pointedly at the set-up of Waterloo on the table. Meres was no longer openly scornful of his hobby, but appeared to regard it as quaintly amusing. Callan had once pointed out that, as an officer, wargaming was exactly the kind of thing Meres ought to like; Meres, in a moment of rare self-awareness, had said, _I was just in it to shout orders and shoot people._ Which summed up a lot of what was wrong with Meres as a human being.

With that, he departed, and Callan got rid of him for a few blissful hours while he played through the opening stages of Waterloo. He had felt uncomfortably aware of Meres' mouth the whole time. And he was so again, when he arrived at the Army & Navy Club, in its new chrome-and-glass clubhouse in Pall Mall and found Meres waiting for him.

"Our job is to persuade Mungo to be indiscreet," Meres murmured to him as they entered the large foyer. "Not usually too difficult. Remember that you're my, ah, 'bit of rough' for this evening, and I'm sure you'll play your part admirably."

"If you pat my arse in public, you'll lose a couple of fingers."

"Mm, even at the RAG, goosing one's dining companions is seen as a bit outre. Save that sort of stuff for when you're on campaign."

"Fits with what I've heard about officers," retorted Callan. But before they could continue in this vein, a familiar mustachioed figure bore down on them.

Meres hadn't been exaggerating when he had described 'Mungo' as a stereotypical officer. In fact, despite the old-fashioned moustache, he was no older than Meres. He was a vigorous, good-looking man, and if Callan hadn't already seen him at FitzWilliams', he wouldn't have guessed him for a queer.

"Mungo, you've not met my friend David." Meres' voice was as insinuating as you could imagine. "Mungo, David Thompson. We met when he came round to fix the attic lock - stupid thing, it stuck like a pig. David, this is Major Montgomery St. Aubyn, of the Blues and Royals. We were at Sandhurst together." And got up to a great deal while they were there.

St. Aubyn's handshake was as hearty as Callan had expected, and his bluish-grey eyes expressed the jovial bonhomie of the gentleman officer in his natural environment. He invited Callan at once to call him by his school nickname; Callan offered his own first name in return. Meres had at least had the decency not to introduce him as 'Dave'.

Edward Duffield, it transpired, was something of a country mouse who occasionally made it up to London to partake of the nightlife. There was a notion that he wasn't too well-off these days, yes, poor chap. His sister had gone abroad, to India, and it might be supposed he was missing her terribly. Also something of a socialist, one hears, though not quite committed enough to be a fellow traveller; just the sort who'd been a member of the Socialist Club at university and kept with it to keep up friendships more than out of any political sentiment.

Meres had been right about the food, which was typical of the handful of gentlemen's clubs Callan had set foot in. It was reminiscent of slightly better school dinners, presumably in deference to the arrested tastes of its patrons. No-one went into the forces for the grub. It made up for it, as clubs usually did, with its wine list.

A cozy atmosphere prevailed over the table. Mungo kept his curious stares at Callan within politely acceptable limits, and strove to give the impression that he and Meres were not talking over his head. Meres occasionally cast him sly, conspiratorial glances; Callan had first thought of kicking him, before he realised that Meres was seeking to convey romantic intimacy to their companion. _If he starts playing footsie with me, he'll limp out of here._

As Meres and Mungo exchanged reminiscences about just what they'd got up to at Sandhurst, each filthier than the last, Callan excused himself to take a telephone call.

"No change, David," reported Liz. "He also wished to make a complaint about his expenses?"

"I bet he does. Thanks, Liz."

There was still no change by the time Callan and Meres turned up at Duffield's house. They paused to consider the lights inside, illuminating the activities of its occupant to any passer-by. Duffield was at his desk in the study, writing.

"David, this is _torturously_ boring. Why don't we just go and ask him nicely?"

As occasionally happened, Meres had a point.

"Take the front," Callan told him, and squelched round to the back.

It sometimes surprised Callan that so many people with things to hide and men to avoid didn't seem to bother looking through their peepholes before they answered the door. As soon as Duffield was called away by the bell, he entered the study and went to the safe. With the ear that wasn't pressed to the tumblers, he heard cries of alarm - Duffield's. He had the envelopes in his hand by the time Meres easily marched a pallid and sweating Duffield back into the study.

"We're here for a chat about your extra-curricular activities, Mr. Duffield," he said, examining the half-written blackmail demands on the desk. Same handwriting as the last, and it matched that on the envelopes, one of which he now opened. Duffield let out a small moan of horror.

Callan considered the shots of him and Meres in that alley, as Meres began to discuss how matters stood in a venemous murmur. As art, they were a bit lacking; but as blackmail material, they got the job done. Duffield's camera was good enough to catch the detail of what they were doing, and how pleased they looked to be doing it. Toby's look of real or feigned pleasure was expected and expectedly convincing; but he was surprised by his own face.

Meres was patting Duffield down with thorough, impersonal professionalism as he continued to threaten him in unctuous tones. Duffield looked on the verge of bursting into tears. Callan let him get on with it and turned his attention back to the desk. There was a locked drawer that interested him; the only one that was locked.

"Please, I won't-!" Duffield burst out. Meres casually backhanded him.

"Won't do it again? Of course you won't, Teddy." Duffield subsided. Meres' hit had split his lip.

"You're friendly with with someone, a chap who's been suggesting a profitable little sideline for you. We want his name."

"Really, he's not-" Duffield's eyes flicked to Meres' face. "I-I met him at the Duke of Beaufort's hunt, last year, near the end of the season."

"A name."

"I didn't catch his name." Meres leant forward. "Really!"

"Alright, so you didn't catch his name, he didn't give you anything to call him?"

"No, nothing."

"So how do you keep in touch?"

"There's an address - please, I'll give it to you..." Duffield gestured to the desk, and to the locked drawer. "I keep my correspondence in my desk."

"Give me the key."

"It's in the ashtray. Here, there's a knack to it..."

Callan fetched the key and unlocked the drawer. The lock mechanism was slightly out of alignment with the key hole, requiring the operator to hold up the drawer at one corner to force them together.

"All the correspondence from your friend, on that desk." Meres let Duffield go reluctantly, but followed him to breathe down his neck as he sorted letters.

There was a crack outside. A shot - no, a car backfiring. But Duffield looked up in horror and his hands came out of the drawer holding a 9mm Luger. Callan's hand curled around the butt of his own Magnum.

"Here!" Duffield's eyes were wide with fear, his hands shaking on the pistol so badly that there was no way he'd get a clear shot - Meres sprang towards him - the gun went off - a line of fire cut across Callan's bicep - Callan knocked the gun from Duffield's hands and brought up his knee into Duffield's stomach, but Meres already had his long-fingered hands around Duffield's weedy neck. There was a nasty _crack_.

Callan watched Duffield slide to the floor with his neck at an unnatural angle, then looked reprovingly at Meres.

"I was meaning to deliver him to Hunter. Bet Snell could get more out of him."

"I suppose you still can, though I'm not sure he'll like you dumping that in his office." Meres didn't even look repentant. "How bad is it?"

Callan was already peeling off his coat.

"Not bad, just a graze." It hurt like hell, like all bullet wounds, and was bleeding sluggishly; but he'd been lucky, and they both knew it. He put his coat back on, though it hurt to bend his arm. "Come on, let's get this stuff and scarper before the neighbours start asking questions."

They headed back to Callan's flat, at Callan's insistence, even though Meres' was closer. The Tube was still running, so Callan phoned the office while they waited at the station. Liz was as unruffled as ever, though she was charmingly solicitous when he mentioned his injury.

It said something for London, Callan thought, that you could get the Underground at gone ten at night with a ripped jacket sleeve and a bloody handkerchief tied around your arm, and nobody tried to alert the transport police.

It was trickier to get through his building to his flat without drawing undue attention; they had to lurk for a moment in the shadows to let a courting couple go in before them. Callan's neighbours knew virtually nothing about him and therefore considered him respectable, and he preferred to keep it that way. They slipped into Callan's flat without incident, and Callan at last peeled away the rudimentary bandaging and took off his jacket and shirt, the wound protesting sorely.

Fortunately, as grazes went, it looked pretty clean; the foreign material in it looked to be mostly Callan's shirt, and Meres picked out the fibers thoroughly. Though of course there was no telling what dirt had been on the bullet itself.

"Well, I've seen worse. On you, come to think of it. Although a chap in my regiment in Mauritius..." Meres told him some story about an officer who'd been Second Lieutenant when he'd just been promoted to Lieutenant, while he disinfected Callan's graze. Had it been anybody else, Callan would have assumed it was a distraction from the pain; but he knew Meres was watching him intently for signs of discomfort. When he flinched and hissed at the burning sting of the rubbing alcohol, Meres smiled just a touch as he went on with the tale of his fellow officer's drunken escapade. He wasn't rough: he didn't need to be. He did linger, though, over the adhesive dressing.

"You can stop fussing now, mother," said Callan pointedly. Meres had done a pretty adequate patching job. It was the product of the same basic first aid they were all taught, at Sandhurst or in the ranks. "Your concern is almost touching. Shouldn't you have left me to die so you can have my job?"

"Ha, ha. I think I can wait for Nature to take its course there. I'm not going to perform a mercy killing over a bullet graze, even a nasty one." Meres tidied away the first aid kit back under Callan's sink. "Besides, I'm sure the Russians or somebody will manage it eventually, so I wouldn't sully my hands. It'll probably happen while I've been assigned to watch your back, worse luck."

Meres sounded not bitter, but wryly fond. It tugged at Callan's memory, a snapshot among a host he preferred not to think about. Meres' pale face looming over him, as anxious and fearful as he'd ever seen him, almost teary, mouthing his name. Callan was quite sure Meres had been cradling him in his arms, too.

Callan had meant it when he'd told Hunter - the new Hunter, because he'd fucking _shot_ the old one, hadn't he? - that he didn't hold a grudge against Meres for shooting him in the lung (while aiming, presumably, for his heart - bad aim, Toby, should have been an instant kill). It had been the right thing to do under the circumstances; shame he'd been a moment too late to prevent Callan from shooting Hunter first. And Callan hadn't missed.

But during the sweaty nightmares about his brainwashing that had haunted his sleep throughout his long convalescence, Toby's face had often flashed up. And every time, Callan had thought, What the fuck have you got to be so upset about? We both know you want me dead, and now you've done it. Congratulations, the top job is yours.

He'd pushed it from his mind with the rest of the memories of that ordeal, banished to the nether depths of his psyche to emerge at inconvenient moments of great emotional stress. But just ocasionally Meres would do something or say something that implied how much he was looking forward to taking Callan's job after his timely demise; and Callan would think, You smug fucker, you almost succeeded in bumping me off once, and you cradled my dying body in your arms and I thought you were going to cry.

Then Meres had buggered off to Washington and Callan hadn't been able to tell him the 'no hard feelings' bit in person. When he recalled Meres nearly two years later, he'd nearly said it in their first interview; but he'd reckoned that Meres could probably work that out for himself, seeing as Callan hadn't told him to shove off again or shot him to even the score.

"Damn right, you'll be watching my back," said Callan. "You lost your chance when you shot me in the lung and didn't finish me off. You'll have to wait for some other young buck to try to assassinate me. Or you," he added thoughtfully. "Didn't think of that, did you? Me, you, Fitzmaurice. We're the best Hunter has. Shouldn't wonder if somebody gets a bit over-eager for your spot one day."

"Shouldn't wonder," Meres agreed, slouching in Callan's other armchair. "I confess I'd started to wonder about Cross and precisely how he intended to become top man in the Section when he wasn't a particularly good agent in the first place. Assassinating his betters might have been the only way. Don't look like that, David," he said upon catching sight of Callan's expression. "You didn't like him either."

No, Callan had never really taken to Cross. But he'd never felt genuinely threatened by him, either.

"Cross was very young," said Callan at length. "Who knows, he might have grown up like you did. You're still a thug who likes his job too much, but you've come a long way from supplying pot and God knows what to your stupid girlfriends." He squinted. "God, don't say you've started supplying it to your stupid boyfriends, instead." That would be all they needed - a drug element to add to the current mess.

Meres looked mortally offended at this insult, coming so soon after Callan had compared him to the imbecilic Cross.

"Not for _years_. Frankly, I didn't think Hunter needed any more potential blackmail material." He got up and returned to Callan's kitchen - kitchenette, really. "Honestly, is that any way to speak to the man who's just bandaged you up and is about to fix you a Scotch?"

"Which bit would you like to deny?"

"I dispute that I was ever as bad at my job as Cross was. Water? The tap here's decent, not like that foul stuff that came out of your Bayswater pipes. Tasted like something from the Broad Street pump last century."

"And to think, that old woman got it brought in specially because she liked the taste. Yeah, a splash. Alright, you were a better tail, I'll give you that. Better in a motor, too."

"To say the least." Meres, mollified by this faint praise, handed Callan his tumbler of Scotch - not Chivas Regal, but still decent enough that Meres didn't put on a faintly appalled expression upon sniffing it. For a man who wasn't much of a whisky drinker, he had strong opinions about it. Probably taught to them at Eton - how to spot the good stuff, no matter what the 'stuff' was. The sneer, Callan was sure, was inborn.

Callan's arm was aching even after the painkillers, and he was glad to get some Scotch down him. Always a nasty business, getting shot. Meres no doubt still had a scar where that amateur had got him with a hunting rifle a few years ago. Only a flesh wound, as it turned out, but it had given Callan a nasty turn. It had happened after their job to fetch the new Hunter from the German border, and despite that Meres was still an utter coldblooded shit, they had a rapprochement and Callan hadn't liked to see him white-faced with pain and bleeding heavily from the arm. His hair had come disarrayed, and it made him look very young.

No doubt Meres still had the scar, and plenty others beside. Not as many as Callan, though.

Callan looked at him, slouched comfortably in Callan's secondhand armchair with a Scotch, and wondered: what makes men like Meres? Like Cross? What makes men who enjoy violence, who need to hurt and kill like a junkie needs a fix? Callan had known plenty of hard men, the kind whose eyes had a flatness behind them that signified indifference to human suffering, or a light that belied sick satisfaction; but he'd never known whether it was upbringing or something in the blood that made them.

Meres didn't have the excuse of a rough childhood, at least: his mother had died before his teens, but plenty of kids lost a parent and turned out normal. Callan imagined Meres senior: the file had said he was a former Colonel, and Callan could summon up any number of military toffs he'd known and despised. The kind of commonplace hard-luck story that made sad men, angry men, sadists, drinkers - but it didn't make them into Meres' kind of thug, or Britain would be overrun with them.

Meres' file also said he had a sister, several years younger. Toby had never mentioned her, so presumably they weren't close; but when Callan had read that file and learned of her existence for the first time, he'd spent a long time wondering about what Sophia might be like. A female Toby? It didn't bear thinking about.

"Wound hurting? You've gone quiet." It wasn't _quite_ convincing as concern for his well-being.

"Haven't you got a sister?" Meres was so surprised that he sat upright.

"Sophy? Yes, just taken her Master's at Newnham. Why?"

"Read it in your file. Made me wonder what she was like, with you as a brother." Callan took a sip of Scotch. "You never mention her. Do you get on?"

"Better than a lot of siblings I could name, though I wouldn't go so far as to say we _like_ each other. She's nearly a decade younger than me, which probably helps - most of the close-in-age siblings I've known fight like cats and dogs. I call her Ratty."

"I dread to think what she calls you."

"Toad. And no, before you ask, there's no _Wind in the Willows_ connection, just coincidence."

"Why Toad?"

"If you asked her, she'd say: because he _is_ an utter toad. And she's a complete rat," he added. "From the stories I have about her at school, I think she was trying to outdo what she'd heard about me at Eton. Cheltenham must have heaved a sigh of relief when they packed her off to read Maths." He sounded slightly, condescendingly fond. The only tales Callan had heard about Meres' school exploits had been from Meres himself, but if his sister's were anything similar, the younger girls of Cheltenham Ladies would have greeted news of Miss. Meres' departure with tears of joy and possibly a celebratory effigy-burning.

They sat in silence for a moment. Callan drank some more of his Scotch.

"I'm assuming you can get us an invitation?"

"For the Hunt? David, I'm a member. And even if I weren't, I've been angling invitations out of the well-connected ever since school. Kept me happily away from home in the holidays."

"Of course you are." Of course he was: even Callan had heard of the Duke of Beaufort's Hunt being among the most prestigious in the country. "Where's the Duke's seat, anyway?"

"Under his arse, usually adopts the forward for jumping. It's Badminton House, over in Gloucestershire. And, speaking of jumping, unless you took some kind of hitherto-unmentioned lessons while I was away, you can't ride."

"No, I can't. And I don't fancy learning."

"Really, at its most basic, all you have to do is not fall off. The Beaufort are pretty serious jumpers, in my experience, but there's always a few taking the gates instead."

Callan turned to his Scotch in pointed fashion.

"No, didn't think I'd be able to sell you on the merits of horsemanship."

"It's all very well you telling me it's easy when you were probably put on your first pony at four."

"Three," Meres admitted. "Tinker, piebald Shetland gelding. Looked sort of like those Thelwell cartoons in _Punch_, you know - a hairy barrel on stubby legs, tiny child in jodhpurs on its back about to be run away with."

"Cute." Perhaps Meres could have done with falling off a couple more times. Might have dampened his ego a little. "Was Duffield telling the truth when he said they were going to meet this weekend?"

"There certainly _is_ a meet this weekend - it was the Opening Meet last week. I'll have to ring the MFH to tell him I'm attending and bringing a guest as hunt follower. Several people there will probably assume we're lovers," he added casually, "and I think it might be useful not to correct them."

"Oh no, I'm resigned by now to my name being linked with yours by all your awful friends." Callan told himself the lurch in his stomach was just due to the bullet graze.


	3. Chapter 3

"I'm sure we could find you something to do. You'd make a fine stablehand, and Beaufort always needs another man around..."

It was a real shame, Callan thought, that he hadn't managed to swing Meres as his valet that one time. Lonely's particular skills had proved more useful, but the memory of Meres' indignation would have kept him warm on cold nights.

"Better to keep up the ruse we've already got on, don't you think?" Not that Callan was so enthused about having to play the rough trade to Meres' cultured effete. Hunter - one of the many, not this one - had occasionally described Callan as 'chippy'. Well, he'd been right, and this job and how Meres had chosen to play it was prodding him right in the places that got sore when he thought about how much of his life was dominated by men who'd been to the right kind of school.

It also meant that he and Meres would probably have to get themselves into compromising situations again, and he was irritated by his own ambivalence about that. He disliked how his thoughts so frequently returned to their faux-romantic clinch in that alley, how they'd put on a show for the sordid Duffield and his camera.

And that brought him to the other rub, the other thorn-prick: when Callan had been breaking into Duffield's house in his absence, Duffield must have been posting a letter, because although the photographs of Callan and Meres were in their labelled envelope in all their sordid glory, the negatives were missing. And there was only one man to whom Duffield would have posted them.

It really was a shame that Meres had killed Duffield instead of just strangling him into unconsciousness. Callan knew well that it was useless to reprove him for hitting people harder than they could take, though he'd been sorely tempted to turn the air in that study blue. That had always been Toby's special way of fucking up a job. He liked it too much, was the thing: the violence, and the killing. Meres didn't just like killing, he needed it, like a chain-smoker or a drug addict needed the next hit. And eventually, as with all addicts, that would make him a liability.

His Grace, though by Meres' own account 'tough as nails', was apparently generous enough to host dinner for a small group who were driving up to the country the day before for a week of hunting - Callan gathered that it was a group of youngish men, with a core who'd been at Eton with his younger son. The Duke himself was not expected to be seen by the party except on the hunting field.

The irritating thing was that they couldn't be certain that their mark would attend. Duffield's letters placed their next meeting some unspecified time in the future. But the Beaufort was their only current link to the man pulling Duffield's strings, so until the scientists of the Section revealed that the brick-dust inside the envelope placed its origin squarely in Norfolk or something, then it befitted them to attend the Beaufort.

They drove to Badminton rather than taking the train: they might need to make a swift exit. Meres looked very entertained by the whole thing. He would: he liked horses. Callan remembered his anecdote about Tinker the Shetland, tried to imagine Meres as a bright-eyed four-year-old, and failed. The black-haired toddler in his imagination had an evil glint in his eye.

The grand house had a sweeping gravel drive, the better to see those coming and going. It was in good repair, too, and there were a couple of young men for the luggage. Nothing like the small army the place would have boasted in its heyday, but not yet completely used-up by the depredations of inheritance tax.

They'd made good time, and there were only a couple of other guests around, as well as their host the Marquess of Worcester, or just 'Worcester', as the other men addressed him. He was a youngish man with a long, weather-beaten face that is so characteristic of the British aristocracy, with high colour and freckles in the cheeks, and an appropriately hearty handshake. Meres had described him as 'quite sweet, really, provided you don't get in his way on the field'. Worcester's gaze held more intelligence than that with which Callan typically credited the titled. He had the intrinsic bearing of an officer tempered with a touch of gentle diffidence, but something about his jaw suggested that at any moment it might set obstinately.

Both Callan and Meres managed to make their excuses, and parted with murmurs of meeting again that evening. Callan saw Worcester's eyes flick between himself and Meres, and realised that Meres had been right. As far as the men he would meet tonight were concerned, there was only one reason why Meres would have brought a working-man here.

"Don't they think it's a bit declasse?" he asked Meres as they slipped out of the French windows of the library. "Just imagine one of your mates turning up with Janine the temporary typist."

"Which a few of them, no doubt, would do. Susie - that's Soames, to you - is especially partial to the kind of girls who look divine until they open their mouths and at once turn into Whitechapel fishwives. It's a little gauche - and God only knows what Susie's girls talk about with the rest of them - but in any case, unless you're about to announce a secret talent for drag, it's irrelevant. You're not my usual sort of friend to bring here, but provided you don't stand on your chair at dinner and start singing 'Keep The Red Flag Flying', I don't think you'll get us thrown out." Meres prodded a drainpipe. "You're quite presentable, you know," he added.

"Thank you, darling, you're not so bad yourself."

They completed a meandering circuit of the house. It would be excellent to defend. More importantly, the window sills were close enough to one another that one could swing between them, and the drainpipes strong enough to bear a man's weight. Callan spared a thought for Lonely and his complaints about the drainpipes of Lambeth.

Dinner was exactly as interminable as Callan had expected. The gentlemen either side of him were well-bred enough not to show overt disdain, but Callan caught the raised eyebrows when he opened his mouth. He made no attempt to soften his accent. He hoped this was reflecting poorly on Meres, who was a few chairs away, having a mostly-friendly argument about shotguns. It sounded a far more interesting conversation than those happening to either side of Callan, which revolved around the best night-spots in Cyprus and the appalling state of the market in horse-flesh, respectively.

Callan's knowledge of horses was limited to them having a leg at each corner and being dangerous at both ends, but he'd been to Cyprus - albeit not to sample the nightlife, except in the vaguest terms - so he listened with half an ear in the hope of picking up something useful about the current goings-on there. Otherwise, he watched his fellow diners and paid attention to his food, which was well-cooked, but tending towards lukewarm, probably because of the distance of the dining room from the kitchens. Without exception, the men around him had the kind of faces he'd seen before: in newspapers, in paintings. Long high-cheekboned faces like Duffield's, with beaky noses and a preponderence of fair hair. Callan had always thought it gave them an inbred air, like over-bred racehorses.

Matters did not improve once they adjourned to the smoking room. The whole thing reminded Callan of how much he hated nobs' parties. It was like any party where you didn't know anybody and all they talked about was people they all knew and you didn't, with a smattering of strident political views you didn't agree with; and to make things worse, it was all carried out in the strangulated accents of the upper class. The Scotch was probably decent, but Callan wasn't drinking tonight.

Meres looked - of course - perfectly at ease. He probably knew half this lot from school. Callan wondered how many of them he'd bullied mercilessly. He thought a couple of men were giving that corner a wide berth. Callan went straight over.

He was tempted to say something like, _Aren't you going to introduce me to your friends, darling?_, but knew he couldn't pull it off, even for the sake of embarrassing Meres. He simply appeared at Meres' elbow and glowered.

"Thompson, I think?" a young man said before Meres could perform introductions. He smiled like a man who did a lot of smiling, professionally. His handshake gave the same impression. "Hugh Buxton, how do you do."

There was a small wave of brief introductions: Leonard Fox, Michael Hunt-Whiteley, Benedict Soames. Yes, they'd all known each other at school, they often ran into each other in the hunting season, and how long have you known Toby, Thompson? Meres repeated the story about Callan coming round to fix his locks. Whether they believed it or not was irrelevant: Callan's hand placed a little too intimately on Meres' arm had already revealed what they'd wanted to know. Nobody mentioned the elephant in the room, namely how desperately out-of-place Callan was in it.

I've done my time in these sorts of places, Callan thought. I've spent enough time with the 'right sort' to ape my betters, if I chose. If I wore a nattier suit and changed the way I spoke, well. You wouldn't think there were earls in the family, but you wouldn't look down on me half so much.

(His accent had softened when he'd been playing Hunter. He hadn't noticed it - Liz too professional and Lonely too frightened to point it out - until upon his return Meres had asked if it was a deliberate choice upon his promotion to the officer class.)

"Toby, I've got that Purdey in my room," announced Fox, suddenly. "You know, the one grandfather was going on about, the one I said I would show you. Something about the engraving - you'd know more than I would..."

Meres agreed genially that he would indeed know more than Fox about this subject, and the two of them made their excuses and toddled off. Callan watched them go with a suspicious glance at Fox. Could it really be _so_ urgent?

"Probably wants to bend Toby's ear about his latest girl," said Soames with a wry grimace. "Given that Toby subscribes to 'treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen', and Reynard's practically the reincarnation of Keats, God knows what advice he's expecting."

"Good of Toby to put up with it, really," agreed Hunt-Whiteley. Both of them had caught Callan's look at the departing men, and interpreted incorrectly but fortuitously. "Here, shall we sit down?"

They sat. The chairs were so squashy that no man could sit in them with dignity, as inevitably he sat down rather further than he had intended. They all managed to struggle more-or-less upright again.

"Is this the part where I assure you of my pure intentions?" They could take _that_ as they liked.

"Hope not," said Soames with bluff cheer, "Toby'll be _very_ disappointed."

"We're just a bit surprised," explained Hunt-Whiteley. "Toby usually makes friends with men - well, men very much like himself."

"Just prettier and easily frightened. Yeah, I've seen them." A couple of impressions of doe-eyed youths from FitzWilliams' sprang to mind.

Hunt-Whiteley laughed. "Now, I wouldn't say you weren't pretty! But yes, it's a rather specific type. It's a change - forgive me for saying so, but a pleasant one - to see him so friendly with an, ah, equal."

If only Hunt-Whiteley knew. Callan could still overpower Meres, though he knew that in a few years that might no longer be true, even with his accumulated cunning. They were more or less equals now, since Meres had returned from Washington with a more even temper and some brains swishing round his aristocratic head. Meres was still an example of how a rather clever man could at times be rather stupid; but he would no longer make the same mistakes he'd made on the Schneider job, years ago.

Callan and Meres were the same type: killers. But Callan would always be faster with a gun, and when Meres eventually lost control and killed the wrong person, too many people, just for fun - Callan knew that he'd be the one putting the final bullet in him. Repayment at last for those two bullets in the lung, and more deserved.

But the longer he spent with Meres on this job, the less appealing this scenario looked. Meres was an amoral dog whom nobody would miss, and Callan resented that _he_ would now miss him. He was getting sentimental - sentimental about a man who had, as Hunter had so accurately put it, less feeling than the bumper on his car.

"I like to think so," said Callan, and sipped his drink.

"So this is where you've hidden him. Hullo, Caine, making friends already?"

"You've brought someone interesting, for once. I was just complimenting Mr. Thompson here on your improved taste in friends." Hunt-Whiteley smiled at both of them, a little slyly.

"Improved since school? I should think so, that was where I met you two reprobates."

"So we did!" Soames was still jovial. He looked like the kind of man who played a lot of rugby. "As I recall, we met when you were hacked off with something Daniels - your fag-master, you remember - had done, so you were laying his fire and arranging stuff so it would go flat in the night, and I came in because I thought it was _my_ fag-master's room - remember Connors? - and I found you doing it."

"And promptly suggested that what I _really_ ought to do was to lay the fire correctly, but spill a little cigarette ash in his Latin book - because he had me do his Greek, but never his Latin - so that when the beak came across it, it couldn't be traced back to me. Yes, yes." And they were off in misty reminiscing. It was almost pleasant to hear about what they'd got up to at school - a sort of Tom Brown's Schooldays - except that a lot of their japes had a nasty tinge to them. Callan had always assumed that Meres didn't have friends, in the same way that he himself didn't: where Callan refused to endanger people and found the inevitable lack of honesty wearing, Meres simply lacked whatever part of the psyche, whatever emotional depth made one able to view other humans as people rather than good actors pasting manipulable personality traits over bruisable flesh. And Callan had been right: these weren't friends. They were a pack.

At last, Callan managed to cut Meres out by himself. The other men tolerated it - Callan caught their smiles. They found it amusing that Meres was getting a taste of his own domineering manner (because Callan had no doubt that Meres tried this same trick on pretty faces). They settled into a corner of the room - at any other dinner they would long since have rejoined the ladies but, as Meres had pointed out, there were none here tonight, not even the aged Duchess, who had dined separately with the Duke - and Callan watched the company while bending his head close to Meres' in what should look like amorous conspiracy.

"My neighbours at dinner were a blank, unless you want to know where to find the best girls in Nicosia. Yours?"

"Spectacularly helpful. I knew them both slightly, and remembered that one was an incurable gossip. I'm thoroughly caught up on what pretty much every one of our contemporaries has made of his manhood - in both senses of the word."

"If there's one thing on this earth you're good for except hitting people, Toby, it's acting clubbable to wheedle information out of them." Not for very long, though: Meres found extended courtesy towards others very taxing. Sort of like a stoat trying to ape the manner of a dormouse. "Go on, impress me."

"Well, that fellow Duffield's letters said something about meeting after dinner, so I just asked who Duffield was accustomed to pall around with these days. The answer is a chap called Carruthers - Philip Carruthers, who may be known to us already. He's a little older than Duffield or me, and everybody says he used to be a Red, but is now known as a staunch Conservative. Not that we haven't see _that_ little ruse before. Here, I'll pick him out for you."

The guests had paired off into groups. Callan scanned them, noting who was associating with whom. Worcester was much in demand, of course, but the three Meres had fallen in with earlier had formed their own comfortable little triad.

"One o'clock, by the mantelpiece, looks like there's a bad smell under his nose," Meres murmured. The man indicated was not talking to Worcester, but hovered on the fringe of a group of much younger and boisterous men. He had a broad, square-jawed face from which his greying hair was swept back in a peak. He was of average height and Callan would guess that he was in decent shape under his evening clothes. His face was handsome enough in a craggy way, and he had a sort of brooding intensity about him that had a touch of the Byronic.

"No wonder Duffield's letters seemed to be taking an amorous tone. I imagine he turned poor Teddy's head quite effectively, despite that I'm told his conversation is somewhat lacking. Fascination quite understandable."

"Conversation not required?" Callan suggested drily. He watched as Carruthers drifted from the edges of the young bucks to hover around Worcester. Yes, it was Carruthers. The fit was almost too perfect.

"We need to get into his room," Callan muttered to Meres. "Where's he staying?"

"In the village, same place everybody stays if they're not in the house itself - I don't fancy His Grace would much like Philip Carruthers cluttering up the place. Wonder how Worcester knows him?"

"Ask him. I want any dirt he has on Carruthers. I'll ring the Section and pass his name on, see what comes up. No, you stay here, watch who he hangs around."

"Hope he's not trying to curry favour with Worcester to try to convince him to spy. The old boy has a terrible shortcoming: he can't lie to save his life. He'll want to stand as MP in a few years, and God knows how he'll manage to keep a straight face. Go on, they're _just_ up-to-date enough in this house to have had the electric telephone put in."

Liz agreed to look for a file on Philip Carruthers in their archive, and to start one if it didn't currently exist. She also passed on that they had no file on Duffield, and could find little useful information. He was, as Callan had guessed, on his uppers due to inheritance tax; he was known to be predominantly homosexual in his habits; he was a member of various photography associations and of the Beaufort Hunt, though he photographed far more assiduously than he hunted. He wasn't known to associate or have sympathies with foreign factions, or any political factions at all, hence the lack of original file. Callan didn't ask how his sudden death had been explained away for curious relatives.

He met Meres on his way back to the party, which had now spilled into various rooms, though not out into the grounds owing to the chilly autumn evening. Meres took his arm, and Callan let it be taken. There were eyes on them. They went down the corridor arm-in-arm, heads close together. Meres had a smile on his face that suggested he might venture something a little more overt. Callan pinched arm, hard. They kept it up all the way to the car, where they disentangled themselves with appropriate reluctance, and Meres got into the driver's seat.

The motor - Meres' big Lancia, the one he used when courting or transporting bodies - purred through the dim twilight. It was pretty countryside round Badminton, and the village itself was right on the doorstep of the great house. It no doubt used to be part of the estate. Perhaps it still was, and all the villagers' homes and livelihoods imperilled by the Duke's temper.

Carruthers' place turned out to be a smarter sort of guest-house. There were a few more far-travelled hunt members staying in the place in readiness for next morning's hunting, but Carruthers was the only one up at the house.

"I managed to catch Worcester, and he says Carruthers isn't really such a friend of his, but he does like his hunting and he's fearfully good on a horse, so when they got chatting last week Worcester invited Carruthers to dinner, though apparently the old man put his foot down at having 'that galumphing drip' over the breakfast table."

"The Duke doesn't think much of him. Why?"

"Worcester isn't sure, but thinks it's something to do with Carruthers' previous Socialist sympathies - never forgiven, never forgotten. Of course, the old man may know something his son doesn't. Not stupid, Worcester, but a little too inclined to take things at face value." Meres parked the car somewhat away from the road, and they got out. "Of course, the Duke may just think Carruthers' conversation is too dull to tolerate."

There was a young woman on the desk at the guest-house. Young was better than old, in Callan's experience: once they passed about thirty-five, women on reception desks and behind bars missed nothing, even if they appeared engrossed in a magazine or a loud endless telephone conversation. The woman here was barely more than a girl, and her awareness extended no further than her paperback. Although there was the noise of a group downstairs, the corridors were deserted, and the two of them slipped upstairs without comment or notice.

Carruthers, according to the register left carelessly open on the desk, was in Room 6: up the stairs, along the corridor, and round the corner. It reminded Callan slightly of the alley and its own snooper's corner. There had been no opportunity to look for the inevitable spare keys, so Callan set to work with his picks. There was no alarm and only two tumblers, which by Callan's jaded standards made it absurdly easy.

He'd just eased the second tumbler into position and heard a _click_ as the whole lock opened, when there were heavy footsteps on the stairs. They both froze. A voice: Carruthers, saying something inaudible to the receptionist.

Meres made a face.

"I'll hold him," he whispered, and disappeared round the corner in the direction of the stairs.

And Callan was off.

Carruthers' suitcase bore fruit immediately. It would have passed a Customs' check or the hands of an ordinary thief; but not somebody who already knew the tricks of apparently smooth lining concealing another pocket within, padded to keep it from rustling.

Inside were two packets. One was evidence that however Carruthers made his money, he was doing his bit to support the Bolivian economy; the other was their jackpot.

This, of course, raised more questions. Why, now that the negatives were in his possession, should Carruthers have wanted to bring them to Badminton? Callan wasn't entirely certain why he should have wanted them in the first place, except perhaps to bring himself in on the game, so that he, not his cat's paw Duffield, controlled the blackmail material.

Callan took them. He had no intention of repeating the experience of opening Duffield's safe to find the negatives passed on to unknown hands.

The ruckus outside had passed. He climbed out of the window and back down the drainpipe, and went round to see if Meres needed any assistance with Carruthers.

He need hardly have bothered. The two of them looked _very_ cozy in their dark corner of the otherwise empty sitting room. Meres must have been batting his lashes fit to strain something, because Carruthers was all but pressing him up against the wall. Callan couldn't quite make out whether that was Carruthers' hand casually touching Meres' thigh or developing into a full-blown grope.

"David," said Meres, warmly. His demeanour suggested faint embarrassment at being discovered intimately cuddled up with another man; the tiny irrepressible smile said that he found the situation irresistibly comedic. "I'm sorry, were you looking for me?"

"Yes." Callan let Meres disentangle himself from Carruthers, who looked increasingly disgruntled. He considered the possibilities of causing a scene by acting the jealous husband and belting Carruthers, but regretfully dismissed them. He escorted Meres away with a hand hovering possessively over his lower back. He could sense Meres' barely-contained mirth.

They went back out to the car, where Callan got into the driver's seat while Meres sniggered behind his hand like a naughty schoolboy.

"Splendid, David," he said once he'd recovered. "You were every inch the jealous wife. Carruthers was furious. What did you get out of his room while I was making up to him downstairs?"

"If you think Carruthers is under the impression _I'm_ the wife in this relationship, you need to see Snell about those delusions. He had the negatives in his suitcase. Thought it would be better just to take them off him this time."

"You think he'll panic?"

"I think I don't want compromising pictures of me getting back to whoever he's working for." The house came into sight. "He had some cocaine, too, only a little. I left him that."

"Shame, Worcester's quite partial to a pinch. Well, let's see what our fox does once he realises his goods are missing. I think he must mean to hand them off to somebody, to go to all that trouble."

"Not such a staunch centre-rightist as he likes to put about, I reckon." The car pulled up in the last touch of autumn sun. A few lights in the house were still on, but no raucous noise drifted out. "Quiet lot, this set of yours?"

"Early start for the hunt. Bit of an embarrassment if the hounds are baying and you're still tying your stock. And if you're late to the Beaufort meet, the Duke probably flogs you ceremonially - not a fellow who puts up with any nonsense. Don't worry, by tonight they won't care any more, and there'll be all the drunken debauchery in the wee hours you could hope for on your tourist experience."

"Wouldn't want to have wasted my visa application. What did you say to Carruthers, anyway, to keep him from getting suspicious about why we were poking around the guest-house?"

"The usual bunkum. Let's say I endeavoured to give the impression that you preferred a certain amount of _discretion_ for which the house did not provide, and furthermore you'd been a bit put off by the atmosphere at dinner, which you found rather stuffy."

"Christ, I sound like a cross between a wilting maiden and a sex maniac," complained Callan. "And he bought it?"

"Believe me, David, 'wilting' is the _last_ word I would have used. Yes, you might be surprised what people will believe of the lower classes."

"After working with you this long, I'm sure I wouldn't."

They sauntered back inside arm-in-arm and with the slightly furtive look of lovers who have slipped away for a private rendezvous. They met a familiar man - he'd sat next to Callan at dinner, the one going on about Cyprus - who nodded to them respectfully but with a tiny lascivious sneer.

"Should have dropped some leaves in your hair, for effect," Meres said under his breath. Callan prodded him in the side with his elbow.

"I'm definitely not the one who comes out of this looking dishevelled." And he reached over to ruffle Meres' hair, which only made him laugh.

"Toby, Mr. Thompson." Hunt-Whiteley, arrived at the perfect moment to witness this unintended moment of intimacy. His smile was beneficent. "Nice of you to join us again. You missed a really blazing row between Worcester and Carruthers, capital entertainment. Not entirely sure what it was about, and I don't think Worcester was either. I don't know Carruthers so well, and I'd quite forgotten what a filthy temper he had."

"Brute," Meres agreed with breathtaking hypocrisy. "Nobody seems to know Carruthers that well, come to think of it. Did Worcester _really_ invite him? He's not what you'd call the life of the party - more the death of it, I'd say."

"Caught him by accident and felt sorry for him, Worcester says, and the sad thing is, I believe him. And of course being a fine rider is practically the only thing Carruthers is known for besides his stodgy politics. There's something really quite magnetic about him, you know, when you see him across the room - and then he opens his mouth."

Sort of like Meres. An attractive rock, until you picked it up and saw what was living underneath.

Hunt-Whiteley invited them for a night-cap, but he was yawning as he said it, and didn't seem sorry when they declined. They all said their goodnights, and left Hunt-Whiteley at his door.

They were, at least, spared the indignity of taking the charade as far as sharing a bed; though, as Meres pointed out, in this environment, them sharing would be far less shocking to delicate sensibilities than an unmarried man and woman doing the same. They could reasonably claim that the thought of buggery had never entered their heads and the bed-sharing was entirely chaste, and those of aforementioned delicate sensibilities might even believe it in preference to the shadow of sodomy.

"Of course, to add to the illusion of authenticity, one of us should probably sneak into the other's room now, then sneak back out before dawn; but that's just too adolescent."

"Not to mention a waste of sleep," said Callan. "I wouldn't share a bed with you unless I was going to die from hypothermia if I didn't."

"You say that now, but the rooms in these old houses do get _ferociously_ cold..."

Meres hadn't been kidding about the temperature, which, even with a fire going, necessitated a speedy change into pyjamas. Fortunately, Callan discovered that there was also a hot brick at the bottom of the bed - the kind he'd thought had been entirely supplanted by hot water bottles these days. It produced the slightly dislocating sensation of having slipped back in time to his childhood; but he slept without interruption.

Until some time in the early hours, with only the faintest rays of dawn beginning to penetrate the heavy curtains, when someone knocked on his door.

"David, it's me." Impatient pause. "If you're looking for your gun, don't bother, it's not that sort of emergency. Let me in or I'll pick the lock, your choice."

Callan reluctantly crossed the frozen uncarpeted floor to let Meres in. Meres, clad in dressing gown and pyjamas and clutching his own hot flannel-wrapped brick, pushed past him.

"Edwards had a barney with Fox, don't ask me why, something about a girl. Now they're making up and almost sobbing on each other's shoulders, it's quite revolting. I've come to sleep with you."

He could argue with Meres, or he could have a few more minutes sleep and not have to put up with Meres in a sulk later. And a hot brick only warmed the toes.

Callan got back into bed and shut his eyes. Meres clambered in after him, and promptly fell asleep with cat-like ease. Callan was caught between the discomfort of sharing a bed not made for two, and the pleasure of shared body heat. He breathed out one long, slow breath, and eased himself back to sleep too.

He awoke for a second time to the alarm clock. Meres, one arm draped over Callan's waist, hissed. Callan dislodged him and dealt with the alarm.

"Go on, sleeping beauty, shove off."

Meres, not a morning person, mumbled a couple of swearwords, followed by something like 'Good morning to you too, darling,' and left for his own room. He looked appropriately disheveled and somehow rather debauched, despite having done nothing more than sleep. The ruffled hair and sleep-softened drowsy manner made him look younger and - it made Callan uncomfortable to think this - rather attractive. He was hardly overcome by the desire to set up home with Meres, but the sight brought back memories of Meres' first comradely overtures on that interminable train ride to the Wall, that had developed into mutual respect and, in the past year or so, into Meres occasionally popping into Callan's flat to deliver information that could have been passed over the telephone, and insult him in a manner dangerously close to friendly.

Callan dressed for the country in tweeds and heavy boots; though a true country man would have preferred a shotgun to the Noguchi he clipped into his shoulder holster. The gun meant he'd need to keep his coat undone, to draw it more easily, so he picked a thick jumper to ward off the November chill.

"Heavens, they'll think I'm sleeping with the gamekeeper," was Meres' comment when he came down for breakfast.

"We all know you nobs like that Lady Chatterly stuff," retorted Callan over the chafing dish. He'd caught Meres' up-and-down before he'd put on a look of mild disdain.

The hunt meet was mostly dull, though enlivened by the morbid prospect of getting kicked in the head should he pass too close behind a horse. Meres had advised him to watch out for a red ribbon on the tail, but Callan gave them all a wide berth on principle. They were fine-looking beasts, even he could recognise that, huge and strong and sleek. Most of the riders were men varying between barely into manhood and late middle age; but there were also plenty of women in dark coats rather than hunting pink, and a coterie of eager children on neatly-turned out ponies under varying degrees of control.

The meet was busy, with all riders mounted and sauntering about, and staff bringing stirrup-cups and taking them away and refilling them. Nevertheless, Callan picked out the men he recognised: Meres' coterie of Fox, Hunt-Whiteley and Soames, Meres himself (who did, unfortunately, look quite splendid on his borrowed dapple-grey), and Carruthers, cutting a fine figure on a dark bay, and wearing a black coat rather than scarlet, as he was a visitor rather than a member. He still appeared to scowl, but Callan recognised the looseness of his posture as that of a man with total control over his mount and confidence in his riding.

Meres had assured Callan that there was little way for Carruthers to sneak off during the hunt itself - "He'll be expected to be near the head of the field, taking every jump. He might try a deliberate fall at a hedge, or something, and feign injury; but that's a damned dangerous trick, and in any case he'd only have to deal with all the foot followers coming to sweep up the casualties."

Among whom Callan had been subsumed with unexpected warmth. They were a warmly-dressed crew, primarily but not exclusively women, got up in wellies and shapeless shooting coats, a stark contrast to the exquisitely turned-out riders. Accents varied between Kensington and Gloucester, and most seemed to be carrying a hip flask in one pocket and a sandwich in the other. When one woman, a blonde in early middle age who introduced herself as Marjorie, discovered that he had neither, he found himself promptly supplied with a slightly squashed sandwich (looked like ham and possibly cheese) and a thermos whose contents could not be identified by sniffing, but were agreeably hot.

"And Barbara's brought tiffin, so what more could one ask for!" exclaimed Marjorie brightly, gesturing to another woman, this one dark and greying, whose bag Callan had been evaluating as a possible container for an AR-15; she opened it to reveal chocolatey squares wrapped in clingfilm instead.

Had Callan been here for the hunt, he might have asked for slightly warmer weather. But he was hunting something else, so the cold and dry conditions were ideal. He melted into the group of foot followers and hounds, but kept a weather eye on Carruthers.

"You're here with Toby Meres, aren't you?" somebody asked - Barbara, who turned out to have a soft local accent and fantastically long, dark eyelashes. "You don't ride yourself, then?"

"No, not into horses at all, though even I can see how handsome some of these beasts are. I do my hunting with a shotgun." Callan fondled the floppy ears of an over-excited hound that came bounding by. "Toby's mad keen for hunting to hounds, though, so I thought I'd try the experience without risking a broken neck."

"I warn you, I don't know how exciting it is if you don't care for horses." Now the hound licked excitedly at Barbara's fingers. "I find it thrilling, of course, even though I'm strictly here to support for the next couple of months till my doctor allows me horseback again. My daughter's around here somewhere, the nine-year-old on the black Highland. Admire them, please - Sooty's about as smartly turned-out as we're ever likely to get the little beast."

Callan laughed obligingly. Barbara smiled warmly and continued:

"To look at him, you'd think he'd be strictly for going through gates; but the funny thing is, he jumps like a rocket! He's taken the big hedge down by Wildcoot's Lane before, and-"

The huntsman's horn sounded. All fell quiet. They might as well not have bothered, for the wind rendered much of the Duke's speech - and it must be the Duke, in that splendid scarlet coat, addressing the Hunt - inaudible. But the old man was a vigorous presence and perhaps keen to set off, because he rattled through his thanks to various benefactors and organisers, then the horn sounded again. The hounds stretched and bayed.

"Hounds are in fine voice," said Callan to Barbara. It was one of the things Meres had told him to say if he couldn't think of anything else both relevant and polite. Barbara bestowed on him another smile.

"Aren't they just!" she said. "I helped whelp some of this pack. They're bred out of champions, you know. Look, we'll let the field go first, once the hounds have picked up the scent. It's glorious to watch them all trot and canter away up the hill!"

Indeed, the hounds were streaming to the front to make a full pack. The Duke was discussing with the terrierman and huntsman, perhaps taking advice on where to look for the fox. Sniffing, tails wagging, more baying. Horses pricked up their ears and danced from foot to foot - they moved - and the Master must have decided which direction to try for a trail, because he took his hunting horn from his saddle and blew a loud note. They moved as a body, dogs flowing over the grass away from the house, up the hill. The dogs went, and the horses followed.

Barbara was right: it _was_ impressive to watch. Callan could pick out Meres easily, even among all the dark heads on the field, and among all the fine-boned greys. He spotted a little blonde girl on a shaggy black pony that must have been the fabled Sooty. They looked like a Thelwell cartoon. And then Carruthers on his dark bay, not so easy to pick out; but Meres was close to him, behind and to the right.

So the mounted field set off, trotting or walking, and the rest trailed behind. There was an air of warm camaraderie among the foot followers, including the terriermen, who were keeping up a lively commentary on their charges.

"Merryman and Foxglove up there, get in, get in! Bonnybell, old lass, she's a good 'un!"

Callan prepared to repeat his inane remark about the hounds, should he be asked, but was not incorporated into that conversation. Instead he was swept up by a group of women in tweeds, stout boots and headscarves, who proved to be for the most part wives or mothers of the mounted followers. Barbara was pleased when he relayed his sight of Caroline and Sooty.

Callan had assumed that the hunt would move off at a brisk pace, and those on foot would simply meander in their wake. In fact, the beginning of a hunt was slow, and Marjorie assured him that there would be a few times in the chase when the hounds would be checked or at fault, and there would be an interlude while they searched again for the quarry, allowing the foot followers to catch up.

All the time, Callan kept an eye on the dapple-grey and the dark bay. The ladies, assuming that he was simply anxious for his friend, made reassuring noises. One remarked on Meres' supposed prowess on the hunting field. By the looks of her - dark and pretty, rather like Barbara, but much younger and with a small, slim figure - she'd probably been one of Meres' target to impress.

After only a few minutes, they came to a stop by a large clump of trees. It was a thick beech covert, of the kind Callan suspected landowners preserved specifically to give hounds somewhere to sniff out a fox. The huntsman cried to the dogs and the whippers-in encouraged them with shouts of 'Yooi!', working them in and out of the covert. The hounds gave tongue and wagged their tails furiously, a swarming mass of white and brown bodies scenting the undergrowth and throwing up their heads.

At last, the fox sprang. He seemed to leap from the middle of the pack, and jinked sharply to the right. The Master's horn blew once more, and the hunt was truly on. The hounds bayed furiously, all fifty or sixty of them, and hurtled after the quarry in hot pursuit.

"Hounds running with good head," announced Marjorie with satisfaction. "Isn't that Daisy and Jolly calling the line, there near the front? Just entered this year, those two. Good bloodstock." The terriermen agreed, one reminiscing about the delivery of Daisy's litter, which turned out to be the one Barbara had assisted in during a terrible storm.

The hounds and horses were quickly out of sight. Even Callan, who was unconvinced of the merits of fox-hunting with anything more than a shotgun, could admit that it was impressive, even magnificent. The hunt flowed over the horizon, all the horses and ponies that had been trotting or walking suddenly breaking into a faster pace that showed off their athleticism. The sight of a horse in motion let Callan truly appreciate for a moment what it was about these animals that commanded such admiration.

The last rumps of the steadier horses bearing very young, very old or very cautious riders vanished over the horizon. The foot followers trudged on. Callan wondered whether they would simply follow the turf where it was trodden up by the horses' hooves. It wasn't his idea of a thrilling day, but they did things differently in the country. The hipflasks probably made it all go with a swing.

They did follow the hunt's path, initially. But the sound of baying and holloa-ing soon came from another direction, and as a body they turned to it.

In a few minutes, they caught up with the hunt once more. The hounds were scenting the ground, encouraged by the whippers-in, and the riders were talking and patting their horses, some visibly panting. Someone, a man of indeterminate age, seemed to be having some trouble with his saddle, and Marjorie strode over to tighten the girth for him.

Then a couple of hounds threw up their heads and gave tongue, and the rest of the pack - what was the term? - they _honoured_ their friends who were calling the line. The terminology of the hunting field was as foreign to Callan as prison argot would be to most of the riders, but he was picking it up from the little Meres had explained to him and what he now heard his companions discussing.

And off the hunt went, again, hounds scenting and baying, but no fox yet visible. This time they were close to a fence enclosed by a a thick hedge, and Callan was in the perfect place to watch the riders attempt it. Some were better than others. Fox came a cropper as his horse refused violently, and he nearly went straight over its ears; he righted himself and had to trot away and calm his mount before he tried again. One man outright fell, though he struggled upright and gamely got on again. Sooty, with Caroline on his back, did indeed jump like a rocket, and it was very satisfying to see that shaggy little pony succeed where larger and finer horses had failed. Carruthers took it effortlessly on his dark bay, with Meres' grey close behind. Ordinarily Callan would have quite enjoyed seeing Meres take a tumble - he could stand a little public humiliation - but now he was glad that they wouldn't lose their mark.

Again, the hunt passed out of sight, at a trot and canter as the hounds followed the fox's trail. Callan took a drink from his borrowed flask, which turned out to contain strong tea. The foot followers tracked the mounted field by the cacophony that must surely echo for miles around. Excitement was in the chilly air.

The chase must have been hard: they caught sight of horses and hounds in the distance, looking like a Frederick Haycock painting, but before they could catch them up, the Master drew the hounds, and the first couples spoke to the line of the quarry, and they were off again, grand and gallant. There were further jumps, and Carruthers and Meres took them all.

This repeated itself a few times over the next hour. Callan ventured to try the clingfilmed sandwich: cheese and ham, and none the worse for being slightly squashed in his pocket. Marjorie shared round her excellent tiffin, which Callan didn't think he'd eaten since he was a child.

By the time they next came upon the hounds, the chase was ended. Callan wasn't sorry not to have seen the moment the hounds switched to coursing the tired-out fox by sight, nor the moment they overtook him before he could go to earth. The Master was holding the brush aloft in triumph, and as Callan watched, he beckoned little Caroline and the fearless Sooty to approach. He wetted the fox's brush in its blood and, just like they described it in books, he daubed some blood onto the little girl's forehead and cheeks. Then he handed her the brush. Her mother was already there to help her pin it to her saddle. Both were smiling fit to make their cheeks sore, like they'd just won something.

Callan looked around for Meres, and found him watching the blooding, looking proud and - at a guess - nostalgic. Then he looked around for Carruthers. After a few tense seconds of scanning the milling crowd of horses and dogs and people, he found him.

Carruthers and his dark bay seemed to melt into the shadow of the copse. Callan kept looking. No, they were turning away, picking their delicate way through the thicket, away from the rest of the hunt. The horse's colour let him blend in with the darkness of the narrow path, and the rest of the hunt were so engaged with the fox and the hounds that nobody paid him the slightest attention, including Meres.

So he'd tried a different trick, after all. Callan crept after Carruthers, sticking to the tree cover so abundantly provided down the narrow track. He wondered where Meres was. He must surely have noticed by now that his mark was missing.

A car, close by. Callan stilled, but Carruthers carried on. They must be close to a road. Callan cursed his lack of knowledge of the surrounding country. He'd pored over a map earlier, but his knowledge of field boundaries was fuzzy. He estimated that they must be near Wildcoot's Lane, with its big hedge that Barbara had described, which put them near a Sopworth, village a mile and some to the north-east of Badminton.

They kept on in what must be the direction of the village, because there was noise: indistinct human voices, a couple of motor cars. Carruthers came to a stop, looked around, and dismounted. He didn't see Callan, who had crouched to avoid scrutiny. They must be on the outskirts by now; he heard a creaking and rushing noise, which he thought might be an old mill-wheel.

There couldn't be a set meeting-time, because Carruthers couldn't have known when the hunt would end or where the fox would lead them. But Callan didn't think it was a dead-drop: if so, why go to all this trouble?

Carruthers had an impatient cast to his shoulders. Every moment he was here, the greater the chance the rest of the hunt might notice he was missing. And it would no doubt be very awkward for him to be discovered half a mile away, hanging about in a copse outside Sopworth.

Callan was still thiking about what an odd place it was for a meeting when the other party turned up.

"Bit of a chop, was it?" he asked lackadaisically. He was a man of medium height, brown-haired, clean-shaven, dressed in a nondescript coat and a bowler, which partially hid his face. Callan still recognised him: he went by the name Andrew Martin in polite circles, but was better known to Callan as Andrei Ivanovich Suryakin, a convivial attache of the Russian embassy, and long-suspected spy.

"We agreed you would be here from ten," Carruthers insisted brusquely. "Here, take it, and let me be off before I'm noticed." He removed an envelope from within his smart hunting jacket. Callan felt like one of the hounds when it scented the line of a fox.

"Mm." Carruthers' contact took the envelope and rifled through its contents with dispassionate professionalism. "Heavens, what these Englishmen get up to! Thank you for your time, comrade."

"Comrade," Carruthers agreed, looking softened by the familiar salutation. He mounted his bay once more, and turned back the way he had come. He passed within touching distance of Callan, who stayed as still as death in case any movement should spook the horse and reveal his position; but Carruthers noticed nothing. The question remained whether Suryakin was so unobservant; or whether Callan was still as good at concealment as he had become in Malaya.

The question became moot, because Callan realised at once that he could not let Suryakin leave with the envelope of negatives. If it was worth arranging a risky meeting to hand over, it was more than compromising photographs of British agents. There were other negatives in that envelope whose purpose Callan hadn't understood because he didn't recognise the faces in them; but they would no doubt mean something to Suryakin and his masters.

Like the fox had earlier, surprised by the hounds' opening cries, Suryakin almost leapt into the air when Callan crept up behind him - but the magnum between his ribs kept him quite steady.

It was desirable, Callan knew, to keep Suryakin alive. But Suryakin didn't need to know that. Nevertheless, Suryakin was a clever man, and he smirked as he handed over the envelope at Callan's demand. Callan checked its contents in turn: the same negatives as he had come across last night, minus the ones featuring Meres and himself.

Callan let Suryakin go with a friendly-ish warning not to bother Carruthers for this kind of thing again. Suryakin agreed and strolled off, still smirking. Callan didn't think it necessary to inform him of the phone-call he would shortly be making that would bring someone - Fitzmaurice, perhaps - to the sleepy hamlet to wipe the smirk right off his face. Suryakin was headed straight to Snell, and he had no idea.

Loud voices up ahead as he trudged back the way he'd come. He found Meres and Carruthers in a consciously friendly but rather tense stand-off at the entrance to the copse. Callan snuck round to try to give the impression that he'd come in from the field where the hunt were now turning homewards, rather than from behind Carruthers.

"David!" Meres' face slackened with relief. It surprised Callan to see that Meres had been concerned for him. Perhaps it shouldn't any more. "Enjoying the hunt so far?"

"I've got something out of it," allowed Callan gruffly, and Meres drew aside his horse to let Carruthers' bay past. Carruthers threw a dirty look at Callan as he trotted by, but it was only the ire of a man thwarted by jealousy. The set-down he'd received yesterday had clearly done nothing for his temper, nor his opinion of Callan.

The hunt walked or trotted home in leisurely fashion, with little Caroline, her face blooded, the girl of the hour. What a sport, when you got bathed in blood and were proud of it. No doubt Meres had a story - that he would regard as sentimental, and Callan as disgusting - about when he'd been blooded as a little boy.

He found himself thinking of Meres a great deal, these days. Not always in the context of work, their shared passion. He couldn't discuss the resolution of matters with Carruthers and Suryakin in the middle of the hunting field with riders and horses and dogs all around, but he could...Meres was now lagging at the back with Callan, and Callan put a hand briefly not on his boot but on his thigh, where the skin was hot through the pale breeches.

Meres looked down, startled, perhaps thinking that Callan wanted to direct his attention to their quarry; but Callan let his hand linger for a moment, then took it away. He didn't look at Meres.

"Duffield had that one about the chap who has it off with the gamekeeper, the new one, did you notice?" asked Meres at last.

"I did. Read a review that compared it very favourably with _Lady Chatterly_."

"Did you indeed? An improvement, I'd call it. Lawrence's language is certainly earthy, but not what passes for erotic these days."

"I'm sure you're the expert."

"I like to think of myself as well-read. Though I confess I hadn't pegged _you_ as having any interest in Forster."

"Mm. Lend me your copy and we'll see how we go."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes:  
\- The tenth Duke of Beaufort really was tough as old boots and what we politely call 'a real character'. He was also childless, which for the purpose of this fic I have chosen to disregard. If you prefer, parse 'younger son' as 'younger brother of the Duke's heir', who was I believe his second cousin once removed.  
\- Parts of this fic were written in affectionate memory of Twinkle: a mare, but in all other respects identical to bb!Meres' Tinker. Stubborn as a mule and half the size.


End file.
